ALEXEY KUSHNIR

Associate Professor of Economics (without tenure)
Tepper School of Business
Carnegie Mellon University
Tepper Quad, 5228
412 268 6079, akushnir@andrew.cmu.edu

 

My primary research interest lies in the domain of Microeconomics and, specifically, the fields of Mechanism design and Market design. In mechanism design, my work focuses on robust mechanisms, i.e., mechanisms that are not sensitive to the fine details of the environment. In particular, [1] shows that in standard social choice environments with private types Bayesian incentive compatibility (BIC) is equivalent to dominant strategy incentive compatibility (DIC). Subsequent papers ([2] and [3]) extend this result to environments with correlated types and non-linear utilities. In conjunction with the BIC-DIC equivalence, [4] analyzes also a purely mathematical question when a transformation of closed sets coincides with the intersection of their images.

My research also studies incentive compatibility constraints—the crucial constraints in mechanism design that ensure that agents communicate their privately held information truthfully. Paper [5] simplifies incentive compatibility constraints in often complex multi-dimensional environments. Using simulations, [6] provides novel conjectures on the characteristics of optimal auctions in multidimensional settings. Another paper [7] develops a novel geometric approach to mechanism design that exploits classical results from convex analysis and majorization theory to provide a tractable analysis of generally complex resource and incentive constraints. A subsequent paper [8] extends the geometric approach to environments with interdependent values.

One of my papers in the area of market design analyzes the problem of allocating courses to undergraduate students ([9]). This is a difficult many-to-many matching problem, in which not only students have preferences over courses, but courses also have priorities based on student majors and student seniority. We develop a deterministic pseudo-market mechanism with priority-specific prices that outperforms random serial dictatorship— the mechanism that is commonly used in US universities. My earlier works on matching also analyze signaling mechanisms in some labor markets and online dating platforms. These papers shows that the introduction of private signals facilitates match formation for a wide range of environments ([10]). Nevertheless, there are instances when signaling precludes match formation ([11]).

Two other research projects analyze equilibria in monopolistic competition markets with endogenous labor ([12]) and study optimal income taxation in the presence of non-competitive markets ([13]), and provide a simple characterization of supply correspondences ([14]).

  1. Gershkov, A., Goeree, J. K., Kushnir, A., Moldovanu, B., & Shi, X. (2013). On the equivalence of Bayesian and dominant strategy implementation. Econometrica, 81(1), 197-220.
  2. Kushnir, A. (2015). On sufficiency of dominant strategy implementation in environments with correlated types. Economics Letters, 133, 4-6.
  3. Kushnir, A. & Liu, S. (2019). On the equivalence of Bayesian and dominant strategy implementation for environments with non-linear utilities. Economic Theory, 67(3), 1-28.
  4. Kushnir, A. & Liu, S. (2020). On linear transformations of intersections. Set-Valued and Variational Analysis, 28, 475-489.
  5. Kushnir, A. & Lokutsievskiy, S. (2021). When is a monotone function cyclically monotone? Theoretical Economics, 16 (3), 853-879.
  6. Kushnir, A. & Michelson, J. (2022). Multi-Dimensional Auctions: Conjectures and Simulations. Working Paper.
  7. Goeree, J. K. & Kushnir, A. (forthcoming). A geometric approach to mechanism design. Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics.
  8. Goeree, J. K. & Kushnir, A. (2016). Reduced form implementation with value interdependencies. Games and Economic Behavior, 99, 250-256.
  9. Kornbluth, D. and Kushnir, A. (2021). Undergraduate course allocation through competitive markets. Working paper.
  10. Coles, P., Kushnir A., & Niederle, M. (2013). Preference signaling in matching markets. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 5(2), 99-134.
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  11. Kushnir, A. (2013). Harmful signaling in matching markets. Games and Economic Behavior, 80, 209-218.
  12. Kushnir, A., Tarasov, A. & Zubrickas, R. (2021). On equilibrium in monopolistic competition with endogenous labor, Economics Letters, 201, 109774.
  13. Kushnir, A. & Zurbrickas, R. (2021). Optimal income taxation and endogenous prices. Working paper.
  14. Krishnamoorthy, V. & Kushnir, A. (2022) A Simple Characterization of Supply Correspondences. Working Paper.
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