Yangbo SONG
UCLA Economics Department, 8283 Bunche Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90025, USA
+1 424-298-0463, darcy07@ucla.edu, yangbosong@gmail.com
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Game Theory, Network Economics, Contract Theory, Mechanism Design
EDUCATION:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Ph. D., Economics, expected graduation: July 2015
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Advisors: Ichiro Obara (Chairperson), William Zame, Moritz Meyer-Ter-Vehn,
Alexander Stremitzer
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M. A., Economics, 2012
University of Hong Kong
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B. A., Economics and Finance (minor in Statistics), 2010
JOB MARKET PAPER:
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Title: “Social Learning with Endogenous Network Formation”
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Abstract: I study the perfect Bayesian equilibrium of a sequential learning model. Each
agent receives a private signal about the underlying state of the world, observes some of
the past actions in a neighborhood of individuals, and chooses one of two available
actions. In contrast to most existing literature, instead of assuming an exogenously given
social network topology, I assume that agents strategically choose the neighborhood to
observe with a cost (or choose not to observe at all without cost) given some capacity
constraint on observation. I characterize pure strategy equilibria, and characterize the
conditions under which there will be the stronger form of asymptotic learning, i.e.
convergence in probability to the right action as the society grows, and the weaker form
of maximal learning, i.e. the same convergence conditional on observation. I show that
when cost is zero and private beliefs are unbounded, asymptotic learning occurs in every
equilibrium if and only if the agents who cannot observe anyone are finite; when cost is
positive and private beliefs are sufficiently strong (not necessarily unbounded), maximal
learning occurs if and only if the observed neighborhood can be arbitrarily large as the
society enlarges; when cost is positive and private beliefs are weak, maximal learning
can be approximated using a stochastic capacity structure for observation, where agents
sometimes face a more constrained choice of neighborhood.
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPTS:

Jie Xu, Yangbo Song, and Mihaela van der Schaar, "Incentivizing Information Sharing in
Networks", 2014 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal
Processing (ICASSP).
SUBMITTED MANUSCRIPTS:
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“Dynamic Network Formation with Incomplete Information”, with Mihaela van der
Schaar, submitted to Economic Theory and under review
WORKING PAPER:
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“Dynamic Network Formation with Foresighted Agents”, with Mihaela van der Schaar
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“Contracting with Externality and Asymmetric Information”
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“Sequential Contracting with Externality and Asymmetric Information”
CONFERENCES:
2013 Southern California Symposium on Network Economics and Game Theory
(UCLA)
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Oral presentation: Yangbo Song and Mihaela van der Schaar, “Dynamic Network
Formation with Incomplete Information”.
2014 Southwest Economic Theory Conference (UCI)

Oral presentation: Yangbo Song and Mihaela van der Schaar, “Dynamic Network
Formation with Incomplete Information”.
HONORS AND AWARDS:
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Dissertation Year Fellowship, 2014 – 2015
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Teaching Assistantship, 2011 – 2014
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Honor Pass in Comprehensive Exam in Microeconomics, 2011
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First-Class Honor, University of Hong Kong, 2010
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Dean’s Honors List, University of Hong Kong, 2008 – 2010
TEACHING AND RESEARCH EXPERIENCE:
Instructor
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ECON 106P (Pricing and Strategy), Summer 2014
Graduate Course Teaching Assistant
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ECON 201B (Lecturers: Prof. Simon Board and Prof. Moritz Meyer-Ter-Vehn), Winter
2013
Undergraduate Courses Teaching Assistant
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ECON 11 (Microeconomic Theory), Fall 2011 and Fall 2012
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ECON 101 (Microeconomic Theory), Winter 2012, Fall 2013 and Winter 2014
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ECON 41 (Statistics for Economists), Spring 2012
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ECON 102 (Macroeconomic Theory), Spring 2014
Research Assistant
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Supervisor: Prof. Mihaela van der Schaar, UCLA Department of Electronic Engineering,
Spring 2013
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Project: Network Formation with Incomplete Information