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Alexey Kushnir

 

Ph.D. student in Economics

at The Pennsylvania State University

 

Research interests:

Primary: Economic Theory, Matching markets, Auctions

Secondary: Political Economics, Decision Theory

 

 

 

 

 

Curriculum vitae

 

Economics links

 

 

Working Papers:

 

Can costless signaling be harmful for matching markets? (2009) (slides)

A costless signaling mechanism has been proposed as a device to improve welfare in decentralized two-sided matching markets. An example of such an environment is a job market for new Ph.D. economists. We study a market game of incomplete information between firms and workers and show that costless signaling is actually harmful for some matching markets. Specifically, signaling lessens the total number of matches and affects ambiguously the welfare of agents. As a result, we show that signals have two controversial roles in matching markets: transmit information and facilitate information asymmetry.

 

Signaling in matching markets with uniform distribution of preferences (2008), (2009 version coming soon)

This paper studies one-to-one matching markets among students and programs with signals under incomplete information. Each student can send up to K identical signals to programs. Each program can invite only one student. Agents’ preferences are ex-ante uniformly distributed. We show that the introduction of signals significantly improves the number of matches compared to a non-signaling case in this environment. Specifically, the expected utility of students and the expected number of matches are higher when programs respond more often to signals. The existence of equilibria and some of the comparative static’s results are extended to many-to-one matching markets.

 

Centralized matching markets with interdependent values (with Utku Unver), 2009

 

Application consideration failure (with Uliana Loginova), 2009

 

 

Other research contributions:

 

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

 

Collective action problem in revolutions Best Student Papers NES (2006) (available upon request)

 

 

 

Teaching experience:

Penn State University (2006-2009)

Lecture: Introductory Econometrics (U)

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)

TA: Stochastic Processes (U)

 

 

 

References:

 

Vijay Krishna

Professor of Economics & Director of

Graduate Studies, The Pennsylvania State University

Phone: (814) 863-8543

Fax: (814) 863-4775

E-mail: vkrishna@psu.edu

Website: http://econ.la.psu.edu/~vkrishna/

Marek Pycia

Assistant Professor of Economics,

University of California, Los Angeles

E-mail: pycia@ucla.edu

Website: http://pycia.bol.ucla.edu/ 

 

 

Contact information:

Mailing address:
5G Keller Building
University Park, PA 16802,
USA

Home address:
1231 S. Allen st. apt. 18
State College, PA, 16801,
USA

Cell phone: 717-701-6855
Email: aik116@psu.edu

Personal website: Link

 

Last updated: June 25, 2009

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