Alessandro Pavan

Contact:

Department of Economics 

Northwestern University 

2211 N. Campus Drive

Kellogg Global Hub 3357

Evanston, Illinois 60208-2600 

Tel. (847) 491-8266 

Fax. (847) 491-7001 

alepavan@northwestern.edu

apavan31@gmail.com

Curriculum Vitae:

• Resume 

Research Interests:

• Economic Theory, Mechanism Design, Information Economics, Matching Design, Global Games, Social Value of Information and Coordination, Optimal Taxation, Platforms 

Working Papers:

The work indicated by _*_ has been supported by the National Science Foundation under the grants SES-0518810 and SES-0721048. The work indicated by _**_ has been supported under the grant SES-1156077. The work indicated by _***_ has been supported under the grant SES 1530798. The work indicated by _****_ has been supported under the grant SES-1730483. The work indicated by _*****_ has been supported under the grant SES 2315652. 

• Engagement Design    —  Slides Engagement Design 

  (with Daniel Fershtman) 

• Non-Sequential-Non-Cascading Clicking in Online Consumer Search  

  (with Daniel Fershtman) 

• Expectation Conformity in Strategic Cognition   — Supplementary Material — Slides expectation conformity 

        (with Jean Tirole)  

• Robust Procurement: Bayesian Design Under Worst-Case Approval Constraints — Supplementary Material   —  Slides Robust Procurement Design 

(with Debasis Mishra and Sanket Patil) 

• (In)efficiency in Information Acquisition and Aggregation through Prices 

(with Savitar Sundaresan and Xavier Vives) — Supplementary Appendix + Additional Material   Slides Information acquisition

• Searching for Arms: Experimentation with Endogenous Consideration Sets — Supplementary Material — Slides-searching-arms  

         (with Daniel Fershtman) 

• Keeping the Agents in the Dark: Competing Mechanisms, Private Disclosures, and the Revelation Principle

(with Andrea Attar, Eloisa Campioni, and Thomas Mariotti)  (*****) — Slides-private-disclosures 

• Knowing Your Lemon Before You Dump It — Supplementary Material —   Slides Knowing Your Lemon 

(with Jean Tirole) — UNDER REVISION

• Exposure to the Unconventional, Mandatory Disclosure, and Contract Design 

(with Jean Tirole)  — NEW VERSION

• Wedge Dynamics under Evolving Private Information — Slides Wedge Dynamics 

(with Miltos Makris) — ONGOING WORK

• Robust Predictions in Dynamic Screening  — Slides-robust-dynamics 

(with Daniel Garrett and Juuso Toikka) — ONGOING WORK

Publications:

• Investment Subsidies with Spillovers and Endogenous Private Information: Why Pigou Got it All Right

(with Luca Colombo and Gianluca Femminis) —  Supplement   —  Slides-Pigou,  JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY,  forthcoming

• Dynamic Contracting— ANNUAL REVIEW OF ECONOMICS, forthcoming 

• Attention, Coordination, and Bounded Recall —  Supplement   — JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY, 2025, 227.

• Adversarial Coordination and Public Information Design  (supersedes: “Persuasion in Global Games with Application to Stress Testing”) — Supplementary Appendix + Additional Material  +  Slides-persuasion-GG 

  (with Nicolas Inostroza) (****) — THEORETICAL ECONOMICS, 2025, 20.2, 763-813.

• Price Customization and Targeting in Matching Markets   — Slides-targeting (***) 

    (with Renato Gomes) — RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, 2024, 55.2, 230-265

• Two-Sided Markets, Platforms, and Matching Design, 

        (with Renato Gomes) —   in “ONLINE MATCHING-BASED MARKET DESIGN,” Echenique, Immorlica and Vazirani Editors, Cambridge University Press

• Wall Street and Silicon Valley: A Delicate Interaction — Slides-WSSV

  (With George-Marios Angeletos and Guido Lorenzoni) - REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES, 2023, 90(3), 1041-1088 1

  Previous version circulated under title "Beauty Contests and Irrational Exuberance: A Neoclassical Approach.”

• Preparing for the Worst but Hoping for the Best: Robust (Bayesian) Persuasion — Slides-robust-bayesian-persuasion 

(with Piotr Dworczak ) (****) — ECONOMETRICA, 2022, 90(5), 2017-2051

• Two-sided Markets, Pricing, and Network Effects  — HANDBOOK OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION, 2022, Vol 4, pp. 485–592.

(with Bruno Jullien and Marc Rysman)

• Matching Auctions  — Supplementary Material  +  Slides-matching-auctions (***)

(with Daniel Fershtman) — RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, 2022, 53(1), 32-62.

• Taxation under Learning-by-Doing  — Supplementary Material  +  Slides-LBD 

(with Miltos Makris) —— JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, 2021 Volume 129, 1878-1944.

• Soft Affirmative Action and Minority Recruitment  -- AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW: INSIGHTS, 2021, 3(1), 1-18.

(with Daniel Fershtman)

• Information Management and Pricing in Platform Markets (**)  

         (With Bruno Jullien)   —  REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES, 2019, 86(4), 1666-1703    Supplementary Material 

• Differential Taxation and Occupational Choice  

          (With Renato Gomes and Jean-Marie Lozachmeur) — REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES, 2018, 85(1), 511–557  — Supplementary Material 

• Pandora’s Auctions: Dynamic Matching with Unknown Preferences  

       (With Daniel Fershtman) —  AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, 2017, 107(5), 186-90 (Papers and Proceedings) — Supplementary Material (***)

• Dynamic Mechanism Design: Robustness and Endogenous Types   ADVANCES IN ECONOMICS AND ECONOMETRICS, 11th World Congress of Econometric Society, 2017, Vol 1, 1-62, Cambridge University Press

•  Many-to-Many Matching and Price Discrimination (**)

          (With Renato Gomes) -- THEORETICAL ECONOMICS, 11, September, 2016, 1005–1052

•  Introduction to JET Symposium on Dynamic Contracts and Mechanism Design

(With Dirk Bergemann) -- JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY,  September 2015, Volume 159(B), 679-1096

•  Introduction to JET Symposium on Information, Coordination, and Market Frictions

(With Xavier Vives) -- JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY, July 2015, 158(B), 407-426

•   Dynamic Managerial Compensation: A Variational Approach         

          (With Daniel Garrett)  -- JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY,  September 2015, Volume 159(B), 775-818 — Supplementary Material 

Results in the previous version no longer in the paper can be found at  Dynamic Managerial Compensation: OLD VERSION  

•   Information Acquisition and Welfare 

           (With Luca Colombo and Gianluca Femminis) -- REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES, 81, October 2014, 81, 1438-1483.

•   Dynamic Mechanism Design: A Myersonian Approach ---- Supplementary Material 

           (With Ilya Segal and Juuso Toikka) -- ECONOMETRICA, 82(2), April 2014, 601-653. It supersedes the old (finite-horizon) version circulated under the same title as well as the notes on

"Infinite Horizon Mechanism Design". Some earlier results are in my solo paper Long-Term Contracting in a Changing World

•   Selection-Free Predictions in Global Games with Endogenous Information and Multiple Equilibria  (*)

         (With George-Marios Angeletos) -- THEORETICAL ECONOMICS, Vol. 8(3), September 2013, 883-938 -- supersedes the paper "Preempting Speculative Attacks: Robust Predictions in a Global Game with Multiple Equilibria"

• Managerial Turnover in a Changing World 

           (With Daniel Garrett) -- JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, Vol. 120(5), October 2012, 879-925 --  Supplementary Material 

•   Truthful Revelation Mechanisms for Simultaneous Common Agency Games  

           (With Giacomo Calzolari) -- AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL: MICROECONOMICS, 2(2), May 2010, 132-190

• Policy with Dispersed Information (*)

           (With George-Marios Angeletos) -- JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION, 7(1), March 2009, 11-60.

•  Sequential Contracting with Multiple Principals 

           (With Giacomo Calzolari) -- JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY, 144(2), February 2009, 503-531. Supplementary Material 

• On the Use of Menus in Sequential Common Agency 

           (With Giacomo Calzolari) -- GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR, Vol. 64(1), September 2008, 329-334

• Efficient Use of Information and Social Value of Information (*)

           (With George-Marios Angeletos) -- ECONOMETRICA, Vol. 75(4), July 2007, 1103-1142.  Supplementary Material 

• Dynamic Global Games of Regime Change: Learning, Multiplicity and Timing of Attacks 

           (With George-Marios Angeletos and Christian Hellwig) -- ECONOMETRICA, Vol. 75(3), May 2007, 711-756.   Supplementary Material

• Socially Optimal Coordination: Characterization and Policy Implications (*)

           (With George-Marios Angeletos) -- JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION, Vol. 5(3), May 2007, 585-593 -- NBER version with mathematical appendix 

•  On the Optimality of Privacy in Sequential Contracting 

           (With Giacomo Calzolari) -- JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY, 130(1), September 2006, 168-204 -- This work builds on a previous paper "Optimal Design of Privacy Policies."

•  Monopoly with Resale 

           (With Giacomo Calzolari) -- RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, Vol. 37(2), Summer 2006, 362-375 --  Supplementary Material 

•  Signaling in a Global Game: Coordination and Policy Traps 

           (With George-Marios Angeletos and Christian Hellwig) -- JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, Vol. 114(3), June 2006, 452-485.  Supplementary Material 

•  Tilting the Supply Schedule to Enhance Competition in Uniform-Price Auctions 

           (With Marco LiCalzi) -- EUROPEAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Vol. 49, January 2005, 227-250 -- Accepted when EER was JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION

• Transparency of Information and Coordination in Economies with Investment Complementarities 

           (With George-Marios Angeletos) -- AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Vol. 94(1), May 2004, 91-98 (Papers and Proceedings)

Teaching:

• Graduate: Advanced Topics in Information Economics  (498)

          For course information refer to Canvas 498 webpage

• Graduate: Economic Theory and Methods (415)

          For course information refer to Canvas 415 webpage

• Graduate:  Information Economics (414-3)

          For course information refer to Canvas 414-3 webpage

• Third Year Econ PhD Seminar (501)

   For course information refer to Canvas 501 webpage

• First-year Micro PhD sequence 

   For course information refer to Canvas 410-3 webpage

• Coordination under Incomplete Information

• Undergraduate: Intermediate Microeconomics 

For course information refer to Canvas 310-1 webpage

Last update: April 2026