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Research fields:
Primary fields: Microeconomics
Secondary fields: Financial Economics
Presentation:
My research focuses on the economics of emerging digital technologies. I am interested in topics such as fintech, platforms, blockchain, and more broadly the digitalization of money and markets.
Job Market Paper:
Paper 1: A Theory of Crowdfunding Dynamics
Abstract: This paper develops a dynamic model of crowdfunding to characterize success rates and welfare and to identify optimal transparency and design policies. We also characterize average bidding profiles. Bidding costs generate two dynamic forces:
(1) decreasing pivotality, driven by reduced scope for strategic complementarity as the deadline nears, pushes the slope downwards; (2) a news effect from observed bidding further pushes the slope downwards for concave cost distributions, but upwards for convex costs. These effects can explain prominent bidding patterns. Non-disclosure of funding progress yields higher welfare than full transparency given homogeneous costs. However, cost heterogeneity favours disclosure by enabling early bidders to activate otherwise passive, higher cost bidders. We also investigate the tradeoff between raising prices and thresholds and we demonstrate success and welfare gains from the indirect dynamic pricing permitted by current platforms.
Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11YzyajOISjtAJv5VwdkQrf4sSOJNu9JY/view
Paper 2: Blockchain design with transmission delays.
Abstract: I develop a parsimonious model of blockchain consensus with transmission delays. I characterize the optimal reward mechanism for miners, showing that it includes both seigniorage from token emissions and transaction fees. Seigniorage convinces miners to operate when pending transactions are scarce. Fees make miners willing to record transactions by offsetting the higher forking risk stemming from increased block size. I demonstrate that transmission delays create a limited-scalability problem. I also show that rewarding forked blocks can raise welfare and that burning tokens can solve consensus incentive problems when verification delays replace transmission delays.
Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VWGl65Mbg5iCSVNWnW3IMZZ1IL4oJuEU/view