Biography

I am an economist interested in applying economic theory and mathematical modelling to analyse how people do, and how they should, make choices under uncertainty, and how to optimally design economic institutions to reduce uncertainty. Within this broad research agenda, my main fields of interest are decision theory, game theory and mathematical economics.
I completed my PhD at the University of Texas at Austin in May 2012. My dissertation, ‘Essays in Economic Dynamics and Uncertainty’, presents a systematic investigation of two topics. One investigates decision making under lack of precise information regarding a decision environment, commonly referred to as ambiguity. It presents a theory that provides an analogous development in classical decision problems under uncertainty, resolves problems in extant models, and offers tools for applied questions regarding ambiguity. The other work studies the provision of insurance in society and related sources of inequalities, adopting a view that an economy is a total of its individuals and interactions among them. Overcoming various theoretical and analytical challenges I provide a realistic applied framework to address questions on aggregate economies, and more specifically on the insurance problem.
Before joining the EUI as a Max Weber Fellow I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University, completing the work from my dissertation and formulating the new economic problems it has suggested, especially the design of contracts in the insurance problem, and in ambiguity. My more recent and related work connects the theory of contracts with the theory of decisions under ambiguity. The connection uses the continuous-time techniques and preserves the tractability in analysis making it possible to apply in similar contexts. It also shows that the consideration of ambiguity in the contracting problem provides one rationale for simpler contracts.
My stay at the Max Weber programme has inspired new ideas that I have been exploring: the behavioural elements of decision making; the problem of collective choice in relation to political institutions; and methodological issues connecting social sciences.