# Research

### Job Market Paper

Scaling Auctions as Insurance: A Case Study in Infrastructure Procurement, with Valentin Bolotnyy

### Abstract

Most U.S. government spending on highways and bridges is done through “scaling” procurement auctions, in which private construction firms submit unit price bids for each piece of material required to complete a project. Using data on bridge maintenance projects undertaken by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT), we present evidence that firm bidding behavior in this context is consistent with optimal skewing under risk aversion: firms limit their risk exposure by placing lower unit bids on items with greater uncertainty. We estimate bidders’ risk aversion, the risk in each auction, and the distribution of bidders’ private costs. Simulating equilibrium item-level bids under counterfactual settings, we estimate the fraction of project spending that is due to risk and evaluate auction mechanisms under consideration by policymakers. We find that scaling auctions provide substantial savings relative to lump sum auctions and show how our framework can be used to evaluate alternative auction designs.

### Publications

Pretrial Negotiations with Optimism, with Muhamet Yildiz
RAND Journal of Economics, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Summer 2019), pp. 359–390

### Abstract

We develop a tractable and versatile model of pretrial negotiation in which the negotiating parties are optimistic about the judge’s decision and anticipate the possible arrival of public information about the case prior to the trial date. The parties will settle immediately upon the arrival of information. However, they may agree to settle prior to an arrival as well. We derive the settlement dynamics prior to an arrival and show that negotiations result in either immediate agreement, a weak deadline effect — settling at a particular date before the deadline, a strong deadline effect — settling at the deadline, or impasse, depending on the level of optimism. We show that the distribution of settlement times has a U-shaped frequency and a convexly increasing hazard rate with a sharp increase at the deadline, replicating stylized facts about such negotiations.

Implementing the Wisdom of Waze, with Avinatan Hassidim and Michal Feldman
International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI). Vol. 24. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2015

### Abstract

We study a setting of non-atomic routing in a network of m parallel links with asymmetry of information. While a central entity (such as a GPS navigation system) — a mediator hereafter — knows the cost functions associated with the links, they are unknown to the individual agents controlling the flow. The mediator gives incentive compatible recommendations to agents, trying to minimize the total travel time. Can the mediator do better than when agents minimize their travel time selfishly without coercing agents to follow his recommendations? We study the mediation ratio: the ratio between the mediated equilibrium obtained from an incentive compatible mediation protocol and the social optimum. We find that mediation protocols can reduce the efficiency loss compared to the full revelation alternative, and compared to the non mediated Nash equilibrium. In particular, in the case of two links with affine cost functions, the mediation ratio is at most 8/7, and remains strictly smaller than the price of anarchy of 4/3 for any fixed m. Yet, it approaches the price of anarchy as m grows. For general (monotone) cost functions, the mediation ratio is at most m, a significant improvement over the unbounded price of anarchy.

### Working Papers

Bargaining and International Reference Pricing in the Pharmaceutical Industry, with Ashvin Gandhi and Pierre Dubois
Slides

### Abstract

The United States spends twice as much per person on pharmaceuticals as European countries, in large part because prices are higher in the US. This has led policymakers in the US to consider legislation for price controls. This paper assesses the effects of a hypothetical US reference pricing policy that would cap prices in US markets by those offered in Canada. We estimate a structural model of demand and supply for pharmaceuticals in the US and Canada, in which Canadian prices are set through a negotiation process between pharmaceutical companies and the Canadian government. We then simulate the impacts of the counterfactual international reference pricing rule, allowing firms to internalize the cross-country impacts of their prices both when setting prices in the US and when negotiating prices in Canada. We find that such a policy results in a slight decrease in US prices and a substantial increase in Canadian prices. The magnitude of these effects depends on the particular structure of the policy. Overall, we find modest consumer welfare gains in the US, but substantial consumer welfare losses in Canada. Moreover, we find that pharmaceutical profits increase in net, suggesting that reference pricing of this form would constitute a net transfer from consumers to firms.

Buying Data from Consumers: The Impact of Monitoring in US Auto Insurance, with Yizhou Jin  (Yizhou's JMP!)

### Abstract

This paper develops an empirical framework for direct transactions of consumer data. We use it to study the design and impact of auto-insurance monitoring programs, in which insurers incentivize consumers to opt into having their driving behavior monitored for a short period of time. We acquire proprietary datasets from a major U.S. auto insurer that offers a monitoring program. The data is matched with price menus of the firm’s main competitors. We develop a model for consumers’ demand for insurance and for monitoring as well as the cost to insure them. Key parameters are estimated using rich data variation in insurance claims, prices, contract space, and monitoring status. We then conduct counterfactual simulations using a dynamic pricing model that endogenizes the firm’s information set. We find three main results. (i) Data collection changes consumer behavior. Drivers become 30% safer when monitored, which boosts total surplus and alters the informativeness of the data. (ii) Demand for monitoring interacts with the product market. Safer drivers are more likely to opt in. But monitoring take-up is low due to both consumers’ innate preference against being monitored and attractive outside options from other insurers. Nonetheless, introducing monitoring raises consumer welfare by 3% of premium per year. (iii) Proprietary data facilitate higher markups but protect the firm’s ex-ante incentives to produce the data. A counterfactual equilibrium in which the firm must share monitoring data with competitors harms both profit and consumer welfare. This is because the firm offers less upfront incentives for monitoring opt-in, so that fewer drivers are monitored.

Voluntary Disclosure and Personalized Pricing, with Nageeb Ali and Greg Lewis
A concern central to the economics of privacy is that firms may use consumer data to price discriminate. A common response is that consumers should have control over their data and the ability to choose how firms access it. Since firms draw inferences based on both the data seen as well as the consumer's disclosure choices, the strategic implications of this proposal are unclear. We investigate whether such measures improve consumer welfare in monopolistic and competitive environments. We find that consumer control can guarantee gains for every consumer type relative to both perfect price discrimination and no personalized pricing. This result is driven by two ideas. First, consumers can use disclosure to amplify competition between firms. Second, consumers can share information that induces a seller---even a monopolist---to make price concessions. Furthermore, whether consumer control improves consumer surplus depends on both the technology of disclosure and the competitiveness of the marketplace. In a competitive market, simple disclosure technologies such as track / do-not-track'' suffice for guaranteeing gains in consumer welfare. However, in a monopolistic market, welfare gains require richer forms of disclosure technology whereby consumers can decide how much information they would like to convey.