Hello!
I work as a competition economist (Associate) at the Brattle Group, in London.
In 2025, I obtained a PhD in Economics from the University of Oxford. I worked on Microeconomic Theory and Industrial Organization, with particular interests in firms' incentives to collect consumer data and invest in data protection.
You can find my CV here . Below, you can find a list of my research papers.
You can reach out to me at manosperdikakis(at)gmail.com.
Data Protection, Learning, and Regulation
Presented at: Paris Conference in Digital Economics (2024), Oligo Workshop (2024), CRESSE (2024), EEA Conference (2024), EARIE (2024)
Abstract:
I study a digital platform’s reputational incentives to invest in data security and examine what policies can raise consumer surplus, using a model that features learning about the probability of a data breach. Policies that affect equilibrium investment trade off the direct benefit of higher security against the potential cost of reduced learning about data-breach risk. When the latter effect dominates, policies that raise investment (e.g. penalties) can decrease total consumer welfare. Furthermore, I find that a planner can raise total consumer welfare by imposing ex-ante limits on data collection based on a firm’s history of data breaches. I show this for two different data-collection regimes: if the firm chooses the level of data collection in every period, the planner optimally limits data collection, regardless of whether the firm previously suffered a breach or not. If, instead, consumers choose how much data to share, the planner may find it optimal to limit data sharing only with a firm that previously suffered a data breach.
2. Ransomware Insurance and Strategic Ransom Demand
Presented at: Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS, June 2026)
Abstract: This paper studies ransomware insurance in a model where payments are determined through bargaining between firms and adversaries. Insurance shapes bargaining through two opposing effects: it improves firms’ outside option (commitment) but also increases their ability to pay (liquidity). I show that which force dominates depends on whether adversaries observe insurance contracts. When contracts are observable, insurance reduces equilibrium ransom demands. When contracts are unobservable, this commitment channel weakens, and with sufficiently tight liquidity constraints, insurance can increase ransom payments and make firms worse off. Regulatory caps on ransom coverage can restore the commitment benefits of insurance.
3. Disclosure and Prevention of Data Breaches
Presented at: Network of Industrial Economists, Leicester (2023), TSE Postal Services and Digital Economics Conference (2024), TSE IO Workshop (2024)
Abstract: I present a principal-agent model with a single firm and a regulator to analyse the tension between incentivizing ex-ante avoidance of negative outcomes and ex-post prompt disclosure of those outcomes, with a specific focus on the regulation of data breaches. The firm does not fully internalize the potential harm to consumers from suffering a data breach, neither the benefits from disclosing one that happens. Hence, it may both invest too little in cyber security and choose inefficiently late disclosure times when breaches do occur. Higher penalties for voluntary disclosure of breaches increase firm investments in cyber security, and breaches happen less frequently. However, this happens at the cost of delayed disclosure for breaches that do occur. I allow for penalties for voluntary and involuntary disclosure to depend on the delay with which data breaches are disclosed in a setting where firms receive private signals about the severity of the breach they face. Under a two-point signal support, I find the family of contracts that solves the principal's screening problem. I identify factors that decrease the disclosure cost of ex-ante incentive provision and thus increase the principal's willingness to provide investment incentives.
4. Move Fast and Break Things, with Oleh Stupak and Greg Taylor