Arseniy Samsonov

Welcome! My name is Arseniy Samsonov. I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at HSE University, Saint Petersburg. I obtained my Ph.D. from UCLA in the Summer of 2021. My research areas are economic theory and political economy. 

CV & Contact

You may contact me at: asamsonov@nes.ru or ad.samsonov@hse.ru. 

My CV is here.

Published and forthcoming papers

"Information Agreements," joint with Kemal Kıvanç Aköz, "Journal of Economic Theory", 2025

Online Appendix

Abstract: We define a (cooperative) informational bargaining problem, where several agents have to agree on the persuasion of a receiver. The bargaining set includes payoff vectors that can be generated by information structures and disagreement leads to an exogenous benchmark that may involve full or no information. We characterize the existence of an agreement that benefits all agents when preferences are state-independent. Our characterization yields conditions that depend only on the payoff structure but are independent of the prior beliefs in some cases. We analyze Pareto efficient information structures in two applications: selection environments, where the receiver picks the best agent, and the bargaining between a retailer platform and a regulator on consumer privacy regulation.

"Minorities in Dictatorship and Democracy,"  "Journal of Public Economic Theory", 2025

Abstract: How does the level of democracy in a country affect the government’s treatment of ethnic minorities? I find that, on average, when the largest ethnic group in a society exceeds half of the population, ethnic minorities are treated better in autocracies and full democracies than in semi-democratic countries. The intuition is that under autocracy a leader needs little pop- ular support, and therefore a coalition of several minorities can rule. By contrast, in a semi-democracy, the leader needs the support of more people, so a coalition of small ethnic groups is insufficient; the largest group is enough and no other groups are necessary. Finally, highly democratic countries require broad support, and most ethnic groups get benefits. My model is based on the Baron-Ferejohn bargaining game and my empirical tests use the Ethnic Power Relations dataset.

"The Fragmentation of views in a Democracy",  "Economics of Governance", 2021

Abstract:  Are voters in democracies more competent if there are more media outlets? To answer this question, I provide a game-theoretic model of media capture and political persuasion in democratic countries. In the model, there are two politicians, the Incumbent and the Challenger. They co-opt the media by offering them access to information. In exchange, the media support politicians who are available for interviews or include journalists in press pools. Voters choose like-minded media. I show that if the Incumbent is sufficiently popular and has little policy information, then media bias in her favor weakly increases in the number of media outlets. Otherwise, media bias in the Incumbent's favor weakly decreases in the number of media outlets. The welfare of voters weakly increases and decreases in the respective cases. The intuition is that, in equilibrium, the Incumbent can co-opt only one media outlet and ensure that enough voters read it. In this case, media outlets compete for access to the Incumbent and agree for a higher bias as their number increases.

Working papers

"Logrolling and the power of single-mindedness", with Albert Sole Olle and Dimitrios Xefteris, conditionally accepted at "Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization"

Abstract: We consider a committee that handles multiple issues, determining both the direction and extent of reforms for each, and investigate how logrolling affects outcomes. Our study provides a complete formal account of decentralized vote-trading in such a setting, by establishing two key findings: a) an essentially unique competitive equilibrium always exists, and b) logrolling improves the welfare of every committee member, and implements the Nash bargaining solution. With sufficiently many issues, a single-minded delegate fully dictates policy within her domain of interest, reflecting the disproportional influence of single-issue minorities in representative democracies.

"Inclusive Networks", with Kemal Kıvanç Aköz, Daniil Fomichev, and Shahir Safi

Abstract: When do fairness and efficiency align in societies where individuals care about one another? We study the Pareto efficiency of resource allocations in networks with altruistic spillovers, where agents value both their own consumption and that of others through distance-decaying altruism. In the linear benchmark, we ask when inclusive interior allocations, such as the egalitarian one, are robustly Pareto efficient for all profiles of altruism. We show that this holds if and only if every connected component of the network is either sparse (a chain or cycle) or sufficiently dense (complete or nearly complete); we call such networks inclusive. With strictly concave private utilities, robust Pareto efficiency instead requires a balanced allocation that equalizes marginal private utilities across connected agents, and we show that such an allocation is Pareto efficient for all discount factors if and only if the network is inclusive. We then introduce a decentralized notion of fairness based on voluntary transfers: an allocation is charity-free if no agent wishes to alter it through unilateral transfers. Charity-freeness for all discount factors is equivalent to balance, implying that an allocation that is both charity-free and Pareto efficient for all discount factors exists if and only if the network is inclusive. Under homogeneous discounting, we further show that vertex-transitive networks are always inclusive, while for trees and complete bipartite networks inclusivity depends on degree structure and the level of discounting. These results suggest that network inclusivity is a central policy variable, relevant both for the design of allocation rules conditional on a given network structure and for the design of social and organizational networks.

"Should Political Influence be Informed?"  joint with Maxim Senkov

Abstract: Do voters benefit if politicians learn their needs? To answer this question, we provide a model where politicians compete by offering a public good to voters. Voters differ in their ideological affinities to the politicians and the benefits the public good gives them. We compare a scenario where politicians target specific voters to one in which they only decide on the level of spending. The first scenario models informed politicians and the second reflects uninformed ones. When politicians are informed, and the budget is large, the incumbent politician wins by targeting a relatively small group of moderate supporters. When politicians cannot target specific voters, a large budget leads to generous promises that benefit voters. As a result, giving voter information to politicians leads to lower welfare. If the budget is low and politicians are informed, the Incumbent offers public goods to poor supporters of the Challenger. Winning them back would require the Challenger to drain the budget, so the Incumbent wins. Because poor citizens get the public good, overall welfare is higher than when politicians are uninformed.