Publications
Public Goods in Networks: Comparative Statics Results (with Sebastian Bervoets; Journal of Economic Theory - Vol 228, 106054, 2025)
Abstract: We consider public goods games with heterogeneous players interacting on a network and investigate how shocks to players' characteristics and changes in interaction patterns influence individual and total contributions. We introduce a linear system associated to the initial game, in which heterogeneity in players' characteristics is removed and interactions between players are reversed, and show that what matters in determining the effects of a shock on contributions is the sign of the coordinates of its unconstrained solution. When players are identical, we demonstrate that shocks on active players increase contributions, while shocks on strictly inactive players decrease them, contrary to intuition. We also identify a subset of players, called neutral players, who exert no influence on total contributions. Furthermore, we provide precise formulas for the change in total contributions following various types of shocks, and provide conditions to determine whether the shock will have positive or negative consequences on contributions. We show that these conditions always rely on the sign of the associated problem's unconstrained solution coordinates of the players impacted by the shock.
Keyworks: Public Goods, Network, Comparative Statics, Heterogeneous Players
Working paper
Robust Mechanism Design on Networks with Externalities (Job Market Paper)
Abstract: Decision makers often seek to target the most deserving, or the most productive, people within a community, while lacking perfect information. This paper examines the allocation problem of a good with a positive externality without monetary payments. Agents, embedded in a network, know both their own and their neighbors' valuations. The principal's goal is to allocate the good to the agent with the highest valuation by proposing a mechanism which asks each agent to report their own and their neighbors' valuations and allocates the good based on these reports. This requires to correctly incentivize agents to report their truthful information. Due to the positive externalities, agents' incentives are partially aligned with the principal's objective—an agent not only wants to receive the good but also prefers that the agent with the highest valuation receives it if they do not. The paper identifies the network structures in which an efficient mechanism exists without assuming any common knowledge on the distribution from which the valuation is drawn, regardless of their beliefs about agents they are not directly connected to. We show that such mechanism exists if and only if at least two agents are connected to everyone. If agents do not use weakly dominated strategies, such mechanism exists if there is at least one agent connected to everyone. This insight guides decision makers in structuring agent networks when they have control over connections.
Keyworks: network, full implementation, belief-free implementation, interdependent valuations, mechanism design without transfers
Work in Progress
Morality in a General Positive Externality Environment (with Mathieu Faure)
Abstract: A Kantian allocation is a solution concept which relies on the concept of moral equivalence. It can be defined in environments where people obey an universal code of conduct which induces a system of equivalence between the actions of heterogeneous individuals. In this paper, we define Kantian allocations in a general class of games, where players can exert costly efforts to induce positive, but heterogeneous externalities on other agents. Then, we prove the existence of Kantian allocations in this setting, by exploiting an important relationship between Kantian allocations and the Lindahl solution concept.
Keyworks: Kantian allocation, positive externality, Lindahl allocation