The microeconomic theory research conducted at Michigan State is primarily applied theory. The strength of the microeconomic theory area lies in its diversity and its focus on applications to a broad range of topics: industrial organization, political economy, information economics, organization economics, and labor economics. Faculty in other fields also conduct microeconomic theoretical research in behavioral economics, development, trade, public economics, decision theory, and micro-founded macroeconomics. The theory group has an external speakers seminar, an internal speakers brown bag, a reading group, an annual joint conference with University of Michigan, and a range of graduate course offerings.
We are hiring!
The Department of Economics at Michigan State University in East Lansing invites applications for a tenure-system Assistant Professor in microeconomic theory with an anticipated start date of August 16, 2027. We are especially interested in candidates doing work in information economics but are open to excellent candidates in all subfields of microeconomic theory.
Review of applications will begin on November 1, 2026, and will continue until a suitable candidate is identified.
Click here to apply!
Faculty (back to top)
The core theory faculty are Jay Pil Choi, Jon Eguia, Thomas Jeitschko, Ce Liu, Arijit Mukherjee, and Hanzhe Zhang, who actively participate in research and teaching activities. In addition to the core theory group, many other faculty conduct microeconomic theoretical research in other fields, such as Benjamin Bushong (in behavioral economics), Chris Ahlin (in development economics), Carl Davidson (in trade), Jay Wilson (in public economics), Antonio Galvao (at the intersection between decision theory and econometrics), and Tony Doblas-Madrid (in micro-founded macroeconomics).
Selected Publications (back to top)
- , Coalitions in repeated games (with Nageeb Ali),
Econometrica, forthcoming. - , Rational expectations fools' bubbles,
International Economic Review, forthcoming. - , Optimal job design and information elicitation (with Zijian Qi and Luis Vasconcelos),
Rand Journal of Economics, Spring 2026. - , Self-enforced job matching (with Ziwei Wang),
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, May 2026. - , Tying with network effects (with Doh-Shin Jeon and Michael Whinston),
American Economic Review, January 2026. - , "Sherlocking" and platform information policy,
Management Science, November 2025. - , Pay it forward: Theory and evidence (with Amanda Chuan),
Games and Economic Behavior, October 2025. - , Changes in marital sorting: Theory and evidence from the US (with Pierre-André Chiappori, Monica Costa Dias, and Costas Meghir),
Journal of Political Economy, October 2025. - , Reputational bargaining with external resolution opportunities (with Mehmet Ekmekci),
Review of Economic Studies, July 2025. - , Failures in forecasting: An experiment on interpersonal projection bias (with Tristan Gagnon-Bartsch),
Management Science, December 2024. - , Lognormal (re)distribution: A macro-founded theory of inequality (with Dimitrios Xefteris),
European Economic Review, November 2024. - , Decentralized matching with transfers: Experimental and noncooperative analyses (with Simin He, Jiabin Wu, and Xun Zhu),
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2024. - , Credible persuasion (with Xiao Lin),
Journal of Political Economy, July 2024. - , Stability in repeated matching markets,
Theoretical Economics, November 2023. - , What makes agility fragile? A dynamic theory of organizational rigidity (with Jin Li and Luis Vasconcelos),
Management Science, June 2023. - , Marital preferences and stable matching in cultural evolution (with Victor Hiller and Jiabin Wu),
Journal of Economic Theory, June 2023. - , Reference dependence and attribution bias: Evidence from real-effort experiments (with Tristan Gagnon-Bartsch),
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, May 2023. - , Platform design biases in ad-funded two-sided markets (with Doh-Shin Jeon),
Rand Journal of Economics, April 2023. - , Learning with misattribution of reference dependence (with Tristan Gagnon-Bartsch),
Journal of Economic Theory, July 2022. - , Group lending with covariate risk (with Godwin Debrah),
Journal of Development Economics, June 2022. - , Network externalities, dominant value margins, and equilibrium uniqueness (with Christodoulos Stefanadis),
International Economic Review, May 2022. - , Do people maximize quantiles? (with Luciano de Castro, Charles Noussair, and Liang Qiao),
Games and Economic Behavior, March 2022. - , Multilateral regime change,
Journal of Public Economics, January 2022. - , Implementation by vote-buying mechanisms (with Dimitrios Xefteris),
American Economic Review, September 2021 - , Learning to game the system (with Jin Li and Luis Vasconcelos),
Review of Economic Studies, July 2021. - , An investment-and-marriage model with differential fecundity: on the college gender gap,
Journal of Political Economy, May 2021. - , A leverage theory of tying in two-sided markets with non-negative price constraints (with Doh-Shin Jeon),
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2021. - , A model of relative thinking (with Matthew Rabin and Joshua Schwartzstein),
Review of Economic Studies, January 2021. - , Optimal certification policy, entry, and investment in the presence of public signals,
Rand Journal of Economics, November 2020. - , Platform competition with endogenous homing,
International Economic Review, August 2020. - , Pre-matching gambles,
Games and Economic Behavior, May 2020. - , Costly information acquisition (with Christopher P. Chambers and John Rehbeck),
Journal of Economic Theory, March 2020. - , Privacy and personal data collection with information externalities (with Doh-Shin Jeon and Byung-Cheol Kim),
Journal of Public Economics, May 2019. - , Information and targeted spending,
Theoretical Economics, May 2019. - , Tactical extremism,
American Political Science Review, February 2019. - , Optimal monetary interventions in credit markets (with Tai-Wei Hu),
Journal of Economic Theory, November 2018. - , On the optimality of diverse expert panels in persuasion games (with Sourav Bhattacharya and Maria Goltsman),
Games and Economic Behavior, September 2018. - , Tax competition with heterogeneous capital mobility (with Steeve Mongrain),
Journal of Public Economics, August 2018. - , Equilibrium selection in sequential games with imperfect information (with Aniol Llorente-Saguer, Rebecca Morton, and Antonio Nicolò),
Games and Economic Behavior, May 2018. - , Discrimination and assimilation at school,
Journal of Public Economics, December 2017. - , Global engagement and the occupational structure of firms (with Fredrik Heyman and Fredrik Sjöholm),
European Economic Review, November 2017. - , Slicing and bundling (with Odilon Câmara),
Journal of Politics, May 2017. - , A theory of patent portfolios (with Heiko Gerlach),
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2017. - , Matching patterns when group size exceeds two,
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2017. - , Relational contracts with subjective peer evaluations (with Joyee Deb and Jin Li),
Rand Journal of Economics, Spring 2016.
Research and teaching activities (back to top)
We have an external speakers seminar, an internal speakers brown bag, and a reading group.
We offer first-year PhD core courses (EC812A: Microeconomics I, EC812B: Microeconomics II), second-year PhD field courses and related courses in behavioral economics and industrial organization.
- EC812A Microeconomics I and Its Mathematical Foundations
Decision theory under certainty and under uncertainty. Demand theory. Production and general equilibrium in competitive markets. Social choice. Mathematical foundations, reviewing analysis and linear algebra. - EC812B Microeconomics II
Introduction to social choice. Market failure, including externalities, public goods, imperfect information and market power. - EC810 Institutional and Behavioral Economics
Relationships among institutions, individual and collective actions, and economic performance. Public choice, property rights, and behavioral theories of firms and bureaucracies. - EC860A Industrial Organization I
Key theoretical models in industrial organizations. Topics may include price discrimination, dynamic monopoly, strategic firm behavior in oligopoly, entry deterrence and exclusionary conducts, advertising, platform markets, research and development, and innovation. Offered half of semester. - EC911A Applied Microeconomic Theory I
Analyses of strategic environments through the tools of Game Theory, using equilibrium concepts and refinements in static and dynamic settings focused on economics applications. Offered half of semester. - EC911B Applied Microeconomic Theory II
Models of beliefs, information, and learning with an emphasis on explaining human behavior and applications of economic interest. Offered half of semester. - EC911C Applied Microeconomic Theory III
Applied theory of institution design, including topics such as mechanism design, matching theory, and political economy, with an emphasis on developing model-building skills that complement empirical applications. Offered half of semester. - EC911D Applied Microeconomic Theory IV
Applied theory of contracts and bargaining, including topics in industrial organization, labor and organizational economics, with an emphasis on developing model-building skills that complement empirical applications. Offered half of semester.