Research

Working Papers:

“Selective Revelation: Information Markets with Biased Media” 

The model describes an environment where media outlets have their own agendas while revealing the true state to a continuum of audience who then proceed to vote on a policy that impacts the audience differently depending on the realized state of nature. This work draws heavily from the Bayesian persuasion literature, in that biased information providers can commit to an information structure a la Kamenica & Gentzkow (2011), and receivers who are rational willingly change their behavior in favor of the sender’s preferred outcome. The main departure from previous work in the Bayesian persuasion literature is that this paper deals with an environment with multiple senders along with multiple receivers and tackles a broader set of questions including social welfare and market outcomes. 

“Is Asymmetric Punishment Useful? The Case of Petty Corruption” 

This paper deals with the debated usefulness of dishing out asymmetric punishment to both parties in corruption cases, especially when the bribed officials are known to extort ordinary citizens. The study finds that asymmetric punishment to battle corruption must be administered with care, as application to unsuitable situations will increase official’s incentives to engage in bribery. As a follow-up to this static study, dynamic models are studied, as well as extensions to interactions between one official and multiple citizens. Results are largely in line with the static model. 

Work in Progress:

“Identity and Priming in a Differentiated Candidate Framework” 

“Identity and Priming in a Differentiated Candidate Framework” draws on the works of Polborn & Krasa (2010, 2012, 2014) and delineates the cases where policy divergence occurs in equilibrium, in contrast to results of the medium voter theorem. Ongoing work attempt to expand the model to admit “endogenous types”, where voters are permitted to choose their own groups before voting, in the spirit of Shayo (2009) and Grossman & Helpman (2018).