Alexey Kushnir

Alexey Kushnir

Ph.D. student in Economics

at Pennsylvania State University

Research interests:

Primary: Microeconomic Theory, Matching markets, Auctions

Secondary: Political Economics, Decision Theory

Curriculum vitae

Economics links

Working Papers:

Kushnir, A. “Matching market with signals”, working paper (2008)

This paper studies one-to-one matching markets with signals under incomplete information. An example of such an environment is a matching market of new economic Ph.D. candidates applying to economic graduate programs for faculty positions. Each student can send up to K identical signals to programs. Each program can invite only one student. The paper shows that the introduction of signals significantly improves the number of matching outcomes compared to a non-signaling case. Besides, programs have lower expected payoffs if they respond more often to signals in equilibria. However, students' expected payoffs and the expected number of matches are higher when programs respond more often to signals. The existence of equilibria and some of the comparative statics results are extended to many-to-one matching markets.

Kushnir, A. “Signaling in matching markets with almost aligned preferences”, working paper (2008) (slides) (available upon request)

This paper studies one-to-one matching markets with signals under incomplete information. I assume an almost complete information environment. Programs have preferences which are perfectly alligned. Students are either "typical" with common known preferences or "atypical with preferences which are ex ante uniformly distributed. The signals have ambiguous inluence on the welfare of students and negative influence on the welfare of programs in this environment. Signaling increases the welfare of "atypical" students giving an opportunity to transmit information about their preferences. In the same time, signaling decreases the expected number of matches in equilibria. Besides, there are equilibria with misleading signals: programs may make offers to students who signaled to them whereas these students rarely accept these offers.

Publications:

Kushnir, A. “Collective action problem in revolutions” Best Student Papers NES (2006) (available upon request).

Other research contributions:

Zhuravskaya E., A. Kushnir, I. Fedukin “Orphans and children deprived from parental care” CEFIR working papers (2007) (in Russian). (available upon request).

Teaching experience:

Penn State University (2006-2008)

TA Adv. Microeconomics (G), Microeconomics (G), Political Economics (U),

Economics of Corporations (U)

New Economic School (2005-2006)

TA Auctions (G), Theory of Economic Reforms (G), Mathematics for Economists (G)

Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (2004-2005)