Working papers

How Information Shapes Price Competition (Job Market Paper, 2025)

Abstract: In many markets, participants learn about their fit with potential partners—buyers evaluating contractors or candidates assessing employers—before prices are set. While such learning improves matches, it can also weaken price competition, thereby creating a welfare tradeoff central to the design of competitive markets. This paper studies how private learning affects price competition and welfare. I develop a model of salary competition in which a candidate privately learns her relative fit with two employers. I show that the candidate’s welfare can be maximized by not learning—especially when productivity is relatively high. By ignoring match information, employers become more substitutable, competition intensifies, and expected wages rise, outweighing mismatch costs. This effect persists when match-specific productivity matters or employers hold private information. When learning is unavoidable, disclosing match information restores competition and improves welfare. The analysis provides a theoretical rationale for lowest-bid tendering and information-disclosure policies.

Protected but Punished? Wage Effects of Whistleblower Protection (CEPR Discussion Paper, 2025) 

with Jae Cho and Tobias Kretschmer

Abstract: We examine the impact of whistleblowing protection laws on  wages, integrating both theoretical and empirical perspectives. We find that strengthened legal protection leads to significant shifts in wage levels, highlighting an unexpected consequence of these legal changes. Specifically, companies with a history of misconduct may lower wages for their employees in response to enhanced whistleblower protection. Our analysis indicates that this wage decline is largely driven by the use of secrecy terms, such as non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).

Work in progress

Optimal Evaluation in Scoring Auctions

Abstract: This paper studies how a buyer’s private learning affects competition and surplus in procurement markets with privately informed sellers. When the buyer learns only which seller is the better match, price competition is unchanged. In contrast, when the buyer learns the magnitude of match values, learning weakens competition and leads sellers to bid less aggressively. As a result, the buyer’s expected surplus is higher when she commits not to learn. The findings highlight that the welfare effects of learning depend critically on what is learned, underscoring the role of information design in procurement and scoring-auction environments. 

The Walk-Away Effect on Monopoly Pricing

Abstract: This paper examines monopolistic pricing when the buyer is uninformed about her own valuation, while the monopolist holds full information. It analyzes the welfare consequences of the interaction between the monopolist and the buyer. The monopolist's surplus is maximized with uniform pricing set at the buyer's prior expected valuation. In contrast, the buyer's surplus is maximized through uniform pricing at the lowest valuation, combined with a strategic purchasing approach, namely walk-away strategy. The findings suggest that educating buyers on strategies like the walk-away approach can enhance their surplus and help balance power in monopolistic markets.