I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of St. Gallen.

My main interests are in industrial organization, particularly contracts, auctions, and contests.

I also study incentives in blockchain markets and in cryptographic protocols.

I am affiliated with the Zurich Center for Market Design.

 

Publications

[8] Working for References (with Curtis Taylor).
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 15(3), 2023, 33-77.

Idea

Job references incentivize worker effort under moral hazard, but are underprovided because firms do not internalize their incentive benefits.

[7] Risk Aversion in Share Auctions: Estimating Import Rents from TRQs in Switzerland.
Quantitative Economics, 14(2), 2023, 419-470. [Replication Files].

Idea

Accounting for bidder risk aversion is crucial for correctly estimating rents and welfare in share auctions.

[6] On Young Turks and Yes Men: Optimal Contracting for Advice (with Curtis Taylor).
The RAND Journal of Economics, 53(1), 2022, 63-94.

Idea

Optimal contracts for information selectively ignore extreme or mild recommendations to align incentives for honest reporting.

[5] Eternal Peace in the Tug-of-War?
Economic Theory, 74, 2022, 1570–1101. (Online first: 2020.)

Idea

Certain tug-of-war structures can sustain peaceful, low-effort outcomes instead of perpetual conflict.

[4] Sorting in Iterated Incumbency Contests (with Georg Nöldeke).
Economic Theory, 74, 2022, 1103–1140. (Online first: 2019.)

Idea

Some repeated contests with incumbency advantages induce positive sorting among contestants, others induce negative sorting.

[3] Stable Biased Sampling.
Games and Economic Behavior, 107, 2018, 109-122.

Idea

Biased sampling procedures can be evolutionarily stable in large population games.

[2] A Tug-of-War Team Contest.
Games and Economic Behavior, 104, 2017, 372-391.

Idea

A team structure fundamentally changes effort provision and rent dissipation in tug-of-war contests.

[1] Payoff Shares in Two-Player Contests (with Georg Nöldeke).
Games, Volume 7(3), 2016, p. 25.

Idea

How prizes are shared directly shapes equilibrium effort and competitive intensity in contests.

 

Working Papers

Mechanism Design with Information Leakage (with Marek Pycia and Haoyuan Zeng)
First Version: October 2025.

Idea

Optimal mechanisms must be redesigned when information about the history of play can leak across agents or stages.

Price Gouging and the Monopoly Option (with Curtis Taylor)
First Version: October 2024. Latest Version: October 2025.

Idea

Price gouging reflects firms’ dynamic incentives under price competition when a supply disruption hits.

The Candle Auction in the Field and in the Lab (with Jonas Gehrlein and Jörg Oechssler)
First Version: January 2025. Latest Version: August 2025.

Idea

Studies candle auctions experimentally and in the field, comparing bidding behavior and efficiency under classic incentive structures versus modern auction formats.

Front-Running and Candle Auctions (with Alistair Stewart)
First Version: Mai 2021. Latest Version: June 2025.

Idea

Investigates front-running problems in pay-as-bid auctions and the potential of candle auction designs to mitigate adverse front-running effects.

Optimal Compensation in Competitive Labor Markets with Heterogeneous Employers and Workers (with Niklas Häusle, Winfried Koeniger, and Alexander Braun).
First Version: November 2024. Latest Version: September 2025.

Idea

Develops a model of competitive wage dynamics with heterogeneous employers and workers when screening interacts with consumption smoothing.

Shakeouts and Staggered Exits from an R&D Race with Moral Hazard.
First Version: March 2020. Latest Version: September 2023.

Idea

Characterizes the dynamics of R&D races under moral hazard, showing how staggered exits and shakeout patterns emerge as equilibrium outcomes.

 

Teaching

Introduction to Market Design (Bachelor).

Microeconomics for CS (Bachelor).

Blockchain Markets (Master).

Corporate Finance (Master).

Topics in Economics (PhD Seminar).