Hi, I'm Duarte.

I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics - University College London.
I work on microeconomic theory and behavioural economics, with a special focus on information economics.
I concluded my Ph.D. in economics at Columbia University in 2021. You can find my CV here.

News

New working paper: Speed, Accuracy, and Complexity

Recently updated:
Retractions: Updating from Complex Information (with Jonathan Libgober and Jack Willis)
Quantal Response Equilibrium with a Continuum of Types: Characterization and Nonparametric Identification (with Evan Friedman)
Statistical Mechanism Design: Robust Pricing, Estimation, and Inference (with Bruno A. Furtado)

Research

Working Papers

Speed, Accuracy, and Complexity
1st draft Feb 2024; updated June 2024; revise and resubmit at Econometrica
| Working Paper

To infer problem complexity, look not at time, but rather at how choices are affected when incentives change.

Sequential Sampling Equilibrium
1st draft Sept 2020; updated Nov 2023; reject and resubmit at American Economic Review
| Working Paper

A new equilibrium solution concept where players sequentially sample to resolve strategic uncertainty over their opponents' distribution of actions delivers predictions on the joint distribution of actions, beliefs, and decision times.

Retractions: Updating from Complex Information
with Jonathan Libgober and Jack Willis; 1st draft June 2021; updated June 2024; conditionally accepted at Review of Economic Studies
| Working Paper

Retractions — provision of indirect information — are treated as more complex than equivalent direct information and subjects infer less from them. (Previously circulated as NBER working paper with the title "Learning versus Unlearning: An Experiment on Retractions")

The Effects of Incentives on Choices and Beliefs in Games: An Experiment
with Teresa Esteban-Casanelles; 1st draft Feb 2020; updated Apr 2023; revising
| Working Paper

The incentive level in games affects choices and beliefs about the opponent by inducing greater cognitive effort.

The Economics of Recommender Systems: Evidence from a Field Experiment on MovieLens
with Guy Aridor, Ruoyan Kong, Daniel Kluver, Joseph Konstan; 1st draft Nov 2022; revising
| Working Paper | Extended Abstract (EC 2023)

Recommendations (i) increase consumption, (ii) affect consumers' beliefs which in turn guide consumption decisions, and (iii) induce further information acquisition.

Quantal Response Equilibrium with a Continuum of Types: Characterization and Nonparametric Identification
with Evan Friedman; 1st draft Mar 2023; updated Mar 2024; revise and resubmit (2nd round) at Games and Economic Behavior
| Working Paper

We provide a complete characterisation of the set of QRE in a class of binary-action games with a continuum of types, including global games, which we leverage to develop nonparametric tests.

Statistical Mechanism Design: Robust Pricing, Estimation, and Inference
with Bruno A. Furtado; 1st draft Mar 2020; updated May 2024; submitted
| Working Paper

A mechanism designer with a sample of consumers' types can conduct valid inference on profit and regret and use our toolkit to compare mechanisms.

Publications

The Dynamics of Instability
with César Barilla; Theoretical Economics
| Working Paper | Published Version

Even in absence of short-term gains, players with diametrically opposed interests want to generate instability to advance their interests.

Recommenders’ Originals: The Welfare Effects of the Dual Role of Platforms as Producers and Recommender Systems
with Guy Aridor; International Journal of Industrial Organization
| Working Paper | Published Version

The ability of platforms to bias their recommendations can lead to vertical foreclosure, but separating recommendation and production is not always welfare improving.

Work in Progress

Revealing Complexity
with Salvatore Nunnari and Julen Zarate-Pina
| Extended Abstract

We leverage the fact that minor changes to relative incentives exert a disproportionately larger impact on choices in complex problems than in simpler ones to investigate how different features of the decision-making environment contribute to the complexity of choice across various domains of interest.

Strategic Thinking and Unexpected Events: An Experiment on Off-Path Beliefs
with Terri Kneeland and Andreas Ziegler

Endogenous Strategic Uncertainty
with Teresa Esteban-Casanelles and Evan Friedman

Identifying Strategic Complexity
with Terri Kneeland and Julen Zarate-Pina

Fact-Checking
with Jonathan Libgober and Jack Willis


Duarte Gonçalves © 2020