TOMMASO DENTI
tdenti@mit.edu
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
OFFICE CONTACT INFORMATION
MIT Department of Economics
77 Massachusetts Avenue, E19-750
Cambridge, MA 02139
tdenti@mit.edu
HOME CONTACT INFORMATION
94 Gore St., Apt. B
Cambridge, MA 02141
Mobile: 857-285-1853
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/tdenti
MIT PLACEMENT OFFICER
Professor Esther Duflo
eduflo@mit.edu
617-258-7013
MIT PLACEMENT ADMINISTRATORS
Ms. Eva Konomi
evako@mit.edu
617-253-8787
Mr. Thomas Dattilo
617-324-5857
DOCTORAL
STUDIES
dattilo@mit.edu
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
PhD, Economics, Expected completion June 2016
DISSERTATION: “Essays on Information Choice”
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE AND REFERENCES
Professor Muhamet Yildiz
MIT Department of Economics
77 Massachusetts Avenue, E18-226
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-253-5331
myildiz@mit.edu
Professor Juuso Toikka
MIT Department of Economics
77 Massachusetts Avenue, E17-246
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-324-3666
toikka@mit.edu
Professor Glenn Ellison
MIT Department of Economics
77 Massachusetts Avenue, E18-269F
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-253-8702
gellison@mit.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
Bocconi University, Milan, Italy
M.Sc. summa cum laude, Economics and Social Sciences
Bocconi University, Milan, Italy
B.A. summa cum laude, Economics and Social Sciences
CITIZENSHIP
Italy
LANGUAGES
English, Italian
FIELDS
Theory
GENDER:
Male
2010
2008
TOMMASO DENTI
OCTOBER 2015 -- PAGE 2
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
14.123 Microeconomic Theory III (Graduate)
Teaching Assistant to Professor Muhamet Yildiz
14.122 Microeconomic Theory II (Graduate)
Teaching Assistant to Professor Glenn Ellison
14.04 Intermediate Microeconomic Theory (Undergraduate)
Teaching Assistant to Professor Juuso Toikka
14.01 Principles of Microeconomics (Undergraduate)
Teaching Assistant to Professor Jeffrey Harris
Spring 2015
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS
“Ando-Modigliani” fellowship for graduate studies
2011-12
PROFESSIONAL
ACTIVITIES
Referee for Econometrica, Mathematical Social Sciences
RESEARCH
PAPERS
“Games with Unrestricted Information Acquisition” (Job Market Paper)
In a game, when there is uncertainty about the state of fundamentals, the
players' behavior depends not only on their information about the state, but also
crucially on their information about each other's information. Before taking
actions, what do the players choose to know about what the others know? In
this paper, I propose a tractable model of information acquisition to address this
question in a systematic way. To unmask the primitive incentives to acquire
information, the model does not impose restrictions on the information choice
technology: the players can acquire information not only about the state, but
also about each other's information in a flexible way. In coordination games, I
show that the players have a strong incentive to know what the others know. In
investment games, this leads to risk-dominance as the unique solution. In
linear-quadratic games, this generates nonfundamental volatility. I further show
that this incentive weakens as the game gets large and players small. In large
investment games, multiple equilibria arise where the players focus on
information about the state. In linear-quadratic games, nonfundamental
volatility vanishes if no player is central in the game.
Fall 2013-14
Fall 2013-14
Spring 2014
“Rationally Inattentive Preferences and Hidden Information Costs”
(Joint with H. de Oliveira, M. Mihm, K. Ozbek)
Theoretical Economics, Conditionally Accepted
We show how information acquisition costs can be identified using observable
choice data. Identifying information costs from behavior is especially relevant
when these costs depend on factors–such as time, effort and cognitive
resources–that are difficult to observe directly, as in models of rational
inattention. Using willingness-to-pay data for opportunity sets–which require
more or less information to make choices–we establish a set of canonical
properties that are necessary and sufficient to identify information costs. We
also provide an axiomatic characterization of the induced rationally inattentive
preferences, and show how they reveal the amount of information a decision
maker acquires.
TOMMASO DENTI
OCTOBER 2015 -- PAGE 3
“Endogenous Informational Smallness”
An agent is informationally small if, given the information of the other agents,
her information is not pivotal to determine the state of fundamentals. When all
the agents are informationally small, the inefficiencies due to asymmetric
information are small and can be disregarded. Informational smallness is often
assumed in settings with many agents. In this paper, I study whether
informational smallness emerges as an endogenous outcome of large games
with unrestricted information acquisition. I show that, in equilibrium,
informational smallness does endogenously emerge, provided that a mild
requirement of non-triviality is satisfied.