NC State

Research

Working Papers

Published Papers

Most people list papers in chronological order. This is boring. Plus I like to rank things. I’m listing my papers in order of awesomeness.

  1. The Roommates Problem Revisited, Journal of Economic Theory, 145 (2010): 1739 – 1756.
    • This paper got me my first job. It will always be #1. As a bonus, it’s a pretty good paper.
  2. (Il)legal Assignments in School Choice with Lars Ehlers, forthcoming Review of Economic Studies.
    • I agonized over whether to rank this first or second. On the one hand, this is obviously my best paper not just in terms of outcome but also in terms of quality. On the other hand, my JMP got me a job. At the end of the day, paying my rent won out. But I love this paper. I would call it my baby, but I think we spent four years trying to get it published, so let me call it my toddler. I love my toddler. Also, working with Lars was a treat. If you ever get the opportunity, I highly recommend it. This paper supersedes two early versions listed below. Some of the early versions have been cited (thanks!) and there are different titles. So for completeness, here are two past versions if for some reason you’re interested. Excuse the typos! Which School Assignments are Legal?. An early version of this paper was presented at EC 16 under the title: Petty Envy When Assigning Objects
  3. Obvious Manipulations, with Pete Troyan. Journal of Economic Theory.
    • I was fortunate these past two years to have two papers I loved and two coauthors who were amazing to work with. Pete, if you ever want to work on another paper, count me in. Anything I wrote would leave sounding awful and come back sounding great. Is there anything better than that?! The guy is pretty smart to boot. We randomized the names on this one, and I sold half of my probability share for a bottle of Scotch. I have no regrets. It was good Scotch.
  4. Two Simple Variations of Top Trading Cycles Economic Theory, 60 (2015): 123-140.
    • You shouldn’t run Top Trading Cycles. You should run Clinch and Trade!
  5. FamilyTies: School Assignment with Siblings with Umut Dur and William Phan.  Theoretical Economics, forthcoming.
    • We had never considered siblings in school assignment until we actually tried to run the Wake County Magnet assignment.  In our first attempt, we assigned 200+ siblings to different schools.  Uh-oh!  This paper is a good example of the symbiotic relationship between academic research and real-world problems.  The application gave us a fun theory problem to work on.
  6. Identifying the Harm of Manipulable School-Choice Mechanisms (with Umut Dur and Robert Hammond) American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 10 (2018), 187 – 213.
    • I now have two publications that have data, regressions, and tables! I hope this doesn’t mean I have to self-identify as an empiricist. Bob deserves the bulk of the credit, but this was a fun paper to work on.
  7. Efficient Procurement Auctions with Increasing Returns (with Oleg Baranov, Christina Aperjis, and Lawrence Ausubel) American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 9 (2017), 1-27.
    • Oleg deserves the bulk of the credit for this one. This paper was 1) fun to work on, 2) took less than 7 months from writing to acceptance, and 3) we got paid to design. What’s not to like?! Now that I think about it, maybe this paper should be ranked higher!
  8. Sequential Kidney Exchange (with Lawrence Ausubel). American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 6 (2014): 265-285.
    • I have a mental list of people I’d be willing to donate a kidney to. Larry is high on the list.
  9. Efficient and (pretty) fair course assignment with quotas, with Martin Bichler, Alexander Hammerl, and Stefan Waldherr, Information Systems Review, forthcoming.
    • This paper supersedes an earlier paper, Making Efficient School Assignment Fairer.  My first rejection on that paper was in 2013, and it was finally published in 2020!  Publishing takes persistence, but it obvious to anyone who reads the two papers that Martin and Stefan made the paper immeasurably better.  It was a pleasure working with them both.  When I think of this paper, I will think of Stefan’s amazing quad-fold wallet.
  10. Competitive Equilibria in School Assignment (with Umut Dur) Games and Economic Behavior
    • Part of my long list of TTC characterizations. Really, this and the justness paper could be put in either order, but this one is newer and shinier, so I’m putting it first. It’s a nice, really simple paper that’s easy to interpret. I like papers like that.
  11. Making Just School Assignments Games and Economic Behavior, 92 (2015): 18 – 27.
    • A reasonable person might complain that I’ve written too many TTC characterization papers. This is the one you should read.
  12. An Alternative Characterization of the Deferred Acceptance Algorithm International Journal of Game Theory, 42 (2013): 19 – 28.
    • I really like this paper. The referees were less enthusiastic!
  13. What You Don’t Know Can Help You in School Assignment (with Umut Dur) Games and Economic Behavior, forthcoming.
    • Some papers are easy, some papers are hard. Umut and I worked really hard on this paper. The proofs took us months to get right. But I think I learned more from this paper than any other paper I’ve written. I never understood EADA until writing this….now I understand it about 50%! All of the ideas for legal assignments came from working on this.
  14. An Alternative Characterization of Top Trading Cycles Economic Theory, 54 (2013): 181-197.
    • My first TTC characterization. Not much else to say.
  15. The Secure Boston Mechanism: Theory and Experiments, (with Umut Dur and Robert Hammond.) Experimental Economics, forthcoming. Supplemental Appendix
    • This paper might have finally broken me when it comes to running experiments. I thought we had a cool new algorithm and interesting experimental results. Seems like a good paper to me! But publishing this was a bear. We have one really great referee to thank for this publication.
  16. Strategic Exclusion of the Highest-Valued Bidders in Wholesale Automobile Auctions (with Robert Hammond) Economic Inquiry, 52 (2014), 1219 – 1230.
    • I’ve been telling “should we call them automobiles or vehicles?” stories about working with Bob for years. That alone makes me happy whenever I think about this paper.
  17. Network Formation Under Negative Degree-Based Externalities, International Journal of Game Theory, 40 (2011): 367 – 385.
    • Sometimes the review process is good. Sometimes it’s awful. This one was the worst. Buy me a beer sometime, and I’ll tell you about it. Still, it was the first paper I ever wrote, so I have a soft spot for it.
  18. The Impossibility of Restricting Tradeable Priorities in School Assignment, with Umut Dur. Conditionally accepted, Journal of Mechanism and Institution Design.
    • I may be counting my chickens before they hatch, as this is only conditionally accepted, but I can live with it if I have to take this off the list. Publishing this was worse than the networks paper. It remains the only R&R I’ve had that I wasn’t able to convert. And yes, that really, really bugs me. But this was my first paper with Umut, so I will always remember it fondly.
  19. Intergenerational Links in Female Labor Force Participation (with Melinda Morrill) Labour Economics, 20 (2013): 38-47.
    • What I love: citations that say Morrill and Morrill. What I hate: I didn’t do all that much on this paper, but it is my most cited article. I guess my wife is a better economist than I am!
  20. Personality Traits and Bidding Behavior in Competing Auctions (with Robert Hammond) Journal of Economic Pyschology, forthcoming.
    • This journal made us do four revisions (including two conditional acceptances!). Much of this had to do with the now infamous “Footnote 9”. But most importantly, when running this experiment a student stood up and then threw up on the floor. That actually happened. As I was on my knees cleaning the floor, I decided that I should stick to theory.