I’m a 4th year PhD candidate in Economics at MIT. I was previously at Oxford where I did my masters in Maths, and at Cambridge where I did my undergrad in Economics, graduating first in cohort. Here is a CV.

I work on game theory and economic theory, with special attention to the ways in which information, learning, and beliefs shape equilibrium outcomes. I’m work on both applications (e.g. information & mechanism design) as well as more foundational aspects (e.g. behavioral, learning in games, higher-order beliefs). I’m particularly interested in the economics of tech firms where I try to understand incentives to develop new technologies, how these technologies shape welfare, and how we might regulate them. In the past I’ve been a fellow at GovAI and the Global Priorities Institute.

On the side I enjoy writing, pottery, and philosophy. I grew up in Singapore.

Journal Publications

  1. ‘Capability Accumulation and Conglomeratization in the Information Age’
    Journal of Economic Theory 210 (2023): 105647.
    (with Jun Chen & Matt Elliott)
    [pdf] [link]

    • A simple explanation for why tech firms have expanded so quickly, into so many new industries.

Working papers/Under revision (by last update)

  1. `Informational Puts’ — new!!
    Extended abstract in EC’24 (titled ‘Full Dynamic Implementation’)
    (with Sivakorn Sanguanmoo & Kei Uzui; latest draft: Nov 24)
    [pdf] [arxiv] [ssrn]
    Talks: Nuffield Oxford, Cambridge, EC’24, various Econometric Society meetings

    • Complete characterization of full implementation in dynamic supermodular games. Whatever can be partially implemented under commitment can also be implemented fully without commitment!

  2. `Flexible Demand Manipulation’ — new draft!!
    (with Yifan Dai; draft date: Oct 24)
    Talks: 2024 Berkeley/Columbia/Duke/MIT/Northwestern IO Theory Conference (short session, scheduled)
    [ssrn] [arxiv]

    • How does targeted advertising interact with market power? We fully characterize the form and value of consumer- and producer-optimal advertising plans under both ex-ante and ex-post measures of welfare.

  3. `Inertial Coordination Games’ — new!!
    (with Ricky Li & Kei Uzui; draft date: Sep 24)
    [pdf] [arxiv]

    • Learning speeds determine whether shocks persist vs fizzle out: risk dominance iff posterior precisions grow sub-quadratically; otherwise shocks can propagate and generate self-fulfilling spirals.

  4. ‘Attention Capture’ — submitted
    (with Sivakorn Sanguanmoo; latest draft: Sep 24)
    [pdf] [ssrn] [arxiv]
    Talks: AEA 2025 meeting session on “Attention and Engagement on Platforms” (scheduled), National University of Singapore, Singapore Management University

    • A unified analysis of how information captures attention.

  5. ‘Robust Technology Regulation’ — new!!
    (with Sivakorn Sanguanmoo; latest draft: Aug 24)
    [pdf] [arxiv] [ssrn]
    Talks: AEA 2025 meeting session on “Policy Implications of Transformative AI” (scheduled)

    • How should risky R&D be regulated robustly to develop optimal worst-case guarantees?

  6. ‘Persuasion and Optimal Stopping’ — submitted
    (with Sivakorn Sanguanmoo & Weijie Zhong; latest draft: Jun 24)
    [pdf] [arxiv]
    Talks: Harvard EconCS seminar, SITE 2024

    • A unified analysis of optimal dynamic persuasion to implement joint distributions over actions, states, and stopping times.

  7. ‘Market Segmentation through Information’ — submitted
    (with Matt Elliott, Andrea Galeotti, & Wenhao Li; draft date: May 24)
    [pdf]

    • Information can implement the fully collusive outcome even without dynamic incentives. We also give a complete characterization of all equilibrium outcomes when a platform controls both access and information.

  8. `Competition and Social Learning’ — new draft!
    (with Ricky Li; draft date: Feb 24)
    [pdf] [ssrn]
    Talks: Econometric Society 2024 European Meetings (scheduled), 2023 Stony Brook Game Theory Conference

    • There is a tradeoff between the speed and the breadth of learning from reviews: slow learning (via certain kinds of noisy signals) can restore efficiency though each consumer is myopic.

  9. ‘Speed vs Resilience in Contagion’ — new version with a generalization to sparse continuous graphs + heterogeneous thresholds coming soon!!
    (with Stephen Morris; draft date: Dec 22)
    [pdf] [ssrn] [slides]

    • Threshold contagion is faster in networks where it is harder to initiate contagion. Intermediate links are important bulwarks against contagion.

Work-in-progress (drafts coming soon!)

  1. `Manipulated Competition’ (with Yifan Dai)

    • A full characterization of optimal advertising plans to maximize producer or consumer surplus when firms compete on prices.

  2. `Prices vs Quantities in Complex Environments’ (with Pedro Martinez-Bruera)

    • Price interventions dominate quantities if and only if shocks to the network of spillovers are sufficiently correlated.

  3. `Common Unlearning’ (with Anna Merotto)

    • An (approximate) common prior (in the sense of common-p beliefs) can emerge suddenly.