Ruhi Sonal
I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities at Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Delhi. I primarily work in decision theory (stochastic choice, bounded rationality and applications, optimal search), sequential games and network formation.
Ph.D. Economics, IIT Delhi, 2020.
Thesis title: Essays in Decision Making and Economic Networks.
Thesis Advisor: Prof. Saptarshi Mukherjee, IIT Delhi.
contact: ruhisonal [at] gmail [dot] com
Research interests:
1. Bounded Rationality and stochastic choice: I am working on developing models of stochastic choice with boundedly rational agents for example, attention constrained individuals. I specialize in axiomatic characterizations of random choice rules. I am also interested in understanding individual decision making when the set of alternatives has a structure: for example, when they appear in a sequence or at the nodes in an ordered tree.
2. Game theory and applications: I am working on games with countably infinite agents and infinite time horizon. I am interested in exploring equilibria notions in this setting and implementation of efficient equilibria.
3 . Economic networks: I am working on modeling the formation of social and economic networks. I focus on characterizing interesting behavioral phenomena such as "herding" which is often observed in online social media.
Publications:
'(Large) finite to continuum: An approximation result for electoral competition models', with Mihir Bhattacharya , Saptarshi Mukherjee and Raghul Venkatesh, Journal of Mathematical Economics (August, 2024)
'A reconciliation between cosine similarity and Euclidean distance in individual decision-making problems,' with Saptarshi Mukherjee, Indian Economic Review (December, 2023).
`Frame-based stochastic choice rule,' with Mihir Bhattacharya and Saptarshi Mukherjee, Journal of Mathematical Economics (December, 2021).
`Consumer equilibrium, random choice and hemi-Bayesian revision rule,' with Mihir Bhattacharya and Saptarshi Mukherjee, Economics Letters (August, 2020).
Working Papers:
Individual Decision Theory:
Mukherjee, S. and Sonal, R., `Random choice from lists'
Bhattacharya, M., Mukherjee, S. and Sonal, R., `Random choice from ordered-trees'
Lahiri, A., Mukherjee, S. and Sonal, R., `Optimal stopping in list-based decisions'
Game Theory:
Mukherjee, S. and Sonal, R., `Signaling and herd behavior in the formation of networks'
Mukherjee, S. and Sonal, R., `Sequential entry and network formation'
Teaching:
Game Theory, IIIT Delhi, Monsoon 2023 onwards
Microeconomics-1, Decision Theory, IIT Jodhpur
Industrial Organisation, Ashoka University
Engineering Economics and Finance, IIT Dhanbad