Welcome to my website!
I am a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Penn State, working on economic theory and political economics. My CV is here.
You can contact me at yiquntong@psu.edu
I am on the 2025-2026 Job Market.
Embedded Files
Working Papers
Shadows of Power: Elite Networks under Authoritarian Purges (Job Market Paper)
Abstract: We study how political elites form networks under a dictator who can purge. Elites choose an undirected network. The total value sums direct and indirect connections, discounted by distance, and subtracts all link costs. The total is allocated across individuals in proportion to their eigenvector centrality. We introduce a pairwise stable subgame-perfect equilibrium (PS-SPE) to analyze efficiency and stability, and prove existence. Efficiency, the dictator’s payoff, and stability need not coincide. The dictator often prefers a star network even when stability or efficiency select denser structures. As costs fall, stable networks densify and power balances; as costs rise, stability shifts toward sparser, more centralized structures. These results formalize a dictator’s paradox: structures that maximize control are not always sustainable, and greater centralization at higher costs can be selected by stability, not only by the ruler’s preferences.
We The People: Supervision Network Design of Institutions, joint with Peiran Xiao
Abstract: When government institutions have misaligned interests, what type of political structure can effectively coordinate among them in the worst-case scenario? We study a stylized principal-agent model where agents have bidimensional preferences over the direction and length of the outcome in a Euclidean plane, whereas the principal has a unidimensional preference for the length. Agents choose their directions of action, which collectively determine the outcome. We model the supervision structure as a directed network where a supervisor can make a take-it-or-leave-it offer consisting of a transfer and a direction to his supervisees. In this network, a pure-strategy subgame-perfect ε-equilibrium exists. We show that when there are three agents, a fully connected network is worst-case optimal for the principal.
Work in Progress
Structure and Stability of Political Parties
Abstract: This paper introduces a model of political party formation and stability, drawing on the Downsian framework and citizen-candidate literature. We examine how a continuum of politicians, each with distinct ideological positions, form coalitions to create political parties and select leaders. The model captures both ideological voting and competition for non-ideological votes through resource allocation, and introduces the concept of split-proof stability to assess when a party structure resists fragmentation. Our analysis characterizes two-party equilibria and establishes conditions under which party stability is maintained or disrupted, offering new insights into the dynamics of party competition and the evolution of political systems.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse