Ashutosh Thakur

TEACHING:

** 2022 Teaching Excellence Award, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS. 

** LKYSPP Ph.D. Program Co-Chair 2024-

Teaching at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore

MPA/MPP/MIA/Ph.D. Classes:

• PP5527 (Game Theory and Strategic Decision-Making) - Asst. Professor Ashutosh Dinesh Thakur

> Jan, 2024 - May, 2024
> Jan, 2023 - May, 2023
> Jan, 2022 - May, 2022

Course Description: This course introduces game theoretic tools to examine strategic behavior and its consequences for a wide range of economic, political, and social applications. We develop important techniques to better navigate strategic interactions from decision-making under risk and uncertainty, collective decision-making, agenda setting and strategic voting, negotiating and bargaining, the value of common knowledge, information disclosure with signaling and screening, participating in auctions, and designing strategyproof mechanisms in practice. We also highlight the limitations of rationality in practice and develop strategic analysis and institutional design techniques in light of individual/collective decision-making given such empirical (ir-)regularities from behavioral economics.

• PP5528 (Designing Markets and Marketplaces) - Asst. Professor Ashutosh Dinesh Thakur

> May, 2024 - Jun, 2024
> Jan, 2023 - May, 2023
> May, 2022 - Jun, 2022

Course Description: This course aims to broaden one's perspective on markets and marketplaces. We learn how to design markets, institutions, and organizations in practice, and analyze their allocative properties, induced incentives, and limitations, to help formulate regulatory policy. The course underscores practical takeaways in designing a wide range of markets, e.g., auctions for procurement and spectrum allocation, matching markets to assign students to schools, doctors to hospitals, and resettle refugees, centralized versus decentralized labor markets for civil servants, online market platforms, natural monopolies for electricity, and incentive schemes promoting pharmaceutical R&D. We cover issues like fairness, efficiency, simplicity, transparency, externalities, and collusion. 

• PP5535 (Strategic Management for Public Policy) - Asst. Professor Ashutosh Dinesh Thakur

> May, 2023 - Jun, 2023

Course Description: This module takes an applied economics approach to strategic management for public policy. We introduce foundational toolsets from network theory, behavioral economics, matching theory, contract and incentive theory for designing effective institutions, efficient organizations, and robust policy implementation. We study applied econometric methods used for data-driven policy evaluation: randomized control trials, regression discontinuity designs, survey designs, and difference-in-difference methods. We cover case studies across wide-ranging policy domains to understand why certain policies and organizations worked/failed and why. We discuss issues like leveraging behavioral economics in policy implementation, networks for optimal information dissemination, implementation of affirmative action, personnel economics for promoting organizational productivity and efficiency, mitigating corruption, etc.

• PP5403 (Economic Foundations for Public Policy) - Asst. Professor Ashutosh Dinesh Thakur (co-taught with Assistant Professor Xi Lu)
  MPP Core Course

> Jan, 2024- May, 2024

Course Description: This is an intermediate microeconomics core class which assumes that students already have exposure to introductory microeconomics and equips them with a more advanced treatment of microeconomics tools and applications. The core course develops a stronger foundation for students to then take elective courses such as health, education, labor, game theory, behavioral, market design, development, trade, and environmental economics classes. The class will focus on developing and introducing advanced tools (e.g., introduction to game theory, informational asymmetry and principal-agent problems, and introduction to auctions) as well as further developing tools from microeconomics to study welfare analysis and policy analysis across a wide range of applications (e.g., efficiency wages in labor markets, the second-best theory, rent seeking and corruption, regulation of market power and externalities, and natural monopolies). The focus will be on the tools and applications most prevalent in public policy.

• Game Theory & Strategic Decision-making
  (Executive  Education)

> July 18, 2024

(Professional Certificate in Global Politics and International Relations 1: Essentials of International Relations and Political Development)

Teaching at Stanford GSB 

I have been a course assistant for multiple Ph.D. and M.B.A. classes at Stanford Graduate School of Business. For 3 years, I have been a teaching assistant for POLECON 680 (Foundations of Political Economy) taught by Professor Steven Callander which is a Ph.D. course in Stanford GSB which covers social choice theory, applied game theory, and modeling. I have also taught game theory lecture in this class. I have been a course assistant and Head TA for two M.B.A classes POLECON 230 (Strategy Beyond Markets) and POLECON (Strategy Beyond Markets: Challenges and Opportunities in Developing Economies) taught by Professor Steven Callander and Professors Katherine Casey and Condoleezza Rice in Stanford GSB. These classes cover how to incorporate lobbying, regulation, media, public opinion and other non-market concepts from political economic to create a more complete business strategy. The second class takes a more focused perspective on emerging markets. 

For more details and teaching evaluations, see below:

Ph.D. Classes:

• POLECON 680 (Foundations of Political Economy)- Professor Steven Callander

> Sept, 2018 - Jan, 2019

> Sept, 2017 - Jan, 2018

> Sept, 2016 - Jan, 2017

Course Description: This course provides an introduction to political economy with an emphasis on formal models of collective choice, public institutions, and political competition. Topics considered include voting theory, social choice, institutional equilibria, agenda setting, interest group politics, bureaucratic behavior, and electoral competition. Also listed as Political Science 351A.

• • • • • Social Choice (Austen-Smith and Banks book), applied game theory, and modeling 

        • Taught lecture covering Game Theory and held office hours 

Teaching Evaluations:

• • • • "Ashu was an excellent TA. He gave very thorough, precise feedback on all assignments, made himself available whenever I needed help, and created a detailed review of key course concepts."

      • "Ashutosh was an expert in the material. He was great at explaining important class concepts, especially game theory."

See full Teaching Evaluations (TA 680 Course Evals.xlsx)

M.B.A. Classes:

• POLECON 231 (Strategy Beyond Markets: Challenges and Opportunities in Developing Economies)- Professors Katherine Casey and Condoleezza Rice

> April, 2019 - June, 2019

Course Description: This course shares significant material with POLECON 230 and the goal of developing integrated strategies for optimal firm performance that combine elements within and beyond markets. POLECON 231 diverges from the base course to delve deeper into issues that are particularly salient for entrepreneurs in emerging and frontier markets. Using a combination of cases from developed and developing countries, we will expand the list of topics considered to include managing political risk and protecting the firm in the face of uncertain and discretionary regulatory environments. The objective is to provide a solid grounding in the techniques explored in 230, while refining skill sets and whetting appetites for investment in higher risk environments.

• POLECON 230 (Strategy Beyond Markets)- Professor Steven Callander

> April, 2020 - June, 2020

> April, 2018 - June, 2018

Course Description: Politicians, regulators, and voters place limits on - and present opportunities for - nearly every business. Firms like Uber, Airbnb, and Google do not only remain cognizant of existing laws, they also look for opportunities to change the law in ways that help their business. In this class, we will learn how businesses can influence political decision-making and develop frameworks for political strategy. We will examine firms' interactions with competitive firms, market incumbents, customers, and institutions, including interest groups, legislatures, regulatory agencies, courts, international organizations, and the public. Case studies include intellectual property, health care reform, carried interest in private equity, ride-sharing, and peer-to-peer lending. Students will complete the course with a better appreciation of how politics works, of the opportunities and perils associated with alternative political goals, and of tactics likely to achieve those goals. Special emphasis is given to beyond market strategy for start-ups and how to integrate market and beyond-market strategies.

ADVISING:

Ph.D. students: 

• Niharika Rustagi (committee member '24) -- "Women's political representation and its impact on policies and outcomes for children and women" --- Postdoctoral Fellow, United Nations University International Institute for Global Health

• Chitra Pratap (co-advisor with Saravana Ravindran)

Masters students:  

• Policy Analysis Exercise MPP Advisor (2022-2023): Radha Malani, Mansi Dhingra, Kohima Goyal, Siti Khadijah Binte Setyo Raharjo Soediro - "Effective Regulatory Ecosystem of School Education in India"

• Policy Analysis Exercise MPP 2nd grader presentation (2022-2023): Lavanyaa Saxena, Momoko Makino, Ogura Shoko, Yang Chieh Ji - "Public Healthcare Governance in Southeast Asia: The Case of Malaysia and Indonesia"

• Case Study Competition Faculty Advisor (2022-2023): Lavanyaa Saxena, Radha Malani, Muskaan Khepla - "New Wine in a Broken Bottle: The Saga of Delhi's Liquor Policy"

MISCELLANEOUS:

Faculty Coach for Global Universities Challenge, World Government Summit (Dubai, 2023), by-invitation

Guest Lectures:

• Alfred Wu's PhD class PP6707 Qualitative Research Methods - Sem 1 2022-23: Generating and Executing Research Ideas (Nov 3, 2022)
  
  

• Ramesh Mishra's PhD class PP6705 Politics of Public Policy - Sem 2 2022-23: Institutions and Public Policy (Jan 17, 2023)
  
  

• Han Dan's MPP/MPA/MIA/PhD class PP5166 Globalization, Health, and Human Development - Sem 2 2023-2024: Kidney Exchange (April 9, 2024)