Mallesh Pai
@malleshpai
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Econ faculty @RiceUniversity / @RiceEcon , Mechanism Designer @specialmech / @consensys
Houston, Texas
Joined December 2009
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During my undergrad, a friend and I randomly showed up at Prof's office. We weren't even in his uni. We told him we want to work on game theory/ mech design/ social choice. Instead of kicking us out of his office (which he should have), he gave us stuff to work on and mentored us
Take a bow Prof Arunava Sen.
#EconISIDelhi
salutes you as you retire! Look forward to seeing you as emeritus faculty soon.
#EconTwitter
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When i tried to retweet, Twitter asked me if I'd like to read the article first 🤣🤣
#QJE
Nov 2022
#9
, “Competing Models,” by Montiel Olea (
@ppm_o
), Ortoleva (
@pietroortoleva
), Pai (
@malleshpai
), and Prat (
@andreapratnyc
):
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Heh cool trophy!
(Was great fun working with Kanishka and Karsten, this is icing on the cake!)
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🍾🥂 (to the outcome, but also to a great time working with 3 amazing coauthors
@PpM_O
,
@PietroOrtoleva
and
@andreapratnyc
!)
Recently accepted by
#QJE
, “Competing Models,” by Montiel Olea (
@ppm_o
), Ortoleva (
@pietroortoleva
), Pai (
@malleshpai
), and Prat (
@andreapratnyc
):
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My first TE 🍾
Accepted: (Bad) reputation in relational contracting, Deb, Mitchell, Pai,
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Rereading a classic that should be required reading for econ students if it isn't already:
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One of the really fun things i got to do this summer is visit the amazing lab they're building at
@a16z
crypto research and chat with
@Tim_Roughgarden
@skominers
and others about cool game theory/ mech design questions they're facing up and down the stack... 1/n
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Apropos
@ShengwuLi
's tweet about history of economic thought--- i still remember how blown my mind was when i read the first paragraph of rothschild and stiglitz:
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@NikhilBasavappa
when you get out of grad school, you cut out the first 2 hours and skim the whole thing.
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Well this is a surprise!!
Congratulations to the winners of the 2020 AEJ Best Paper Awards! Check out the winning papers here.
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Exhibit A (and my personal favorite):
In classic academic papers, some passages confuse the modern reader, because they are defenses so successful that the critiques they defend against are long dead. Some passages are written to be remembered; some passages are written to be forgotten
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Old joke: Advisor tells their graduating student to leave 20$ bill in the hardcopy of thesis in the library.
Oh as a reward for the first reader, the student asks?
No, when you come back to town you have backup cash for lunch the prof replies.
A PhD is temporary.
That typo in your thesis is forever.
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Paul Halmos on the subject:
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Spent a lot of time trying to come up with a pithy, informative thread about a new paper I'm pretty excited about, "Censorship Resistance in On-Chain Auctions" (with
@MaxResnick1
and
@eljhfx
:
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@chiarapack
I see you got answers already but if isn't available online freely, yes! Indeed, I once emailed a prof (in France) as an undergrad (in India)... he literally snail-mailed me a preprint of the paper!! I think i still have it somewhere...
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A fun sidequest successfully achieved to our theory conference :)
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Also should they sign this statement at the top of the paper? Or at the bottom?
Should authors sign statements before submitting as to their contribution? Ex post “wasn’t me” excuses that your coauthors or RAs did the data work would be better supported. And, it’ll help editors decide whether they are ok with papers produced by RAs who are not coauthors.
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🚨 Really excited to host a workshop on Blockchains and Decentralized Finance tomorrow, Monday July 8th at EC24
@AcmSIGecom
. Quite an exciting program up ahead:
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In one of my first weeks as a junior faculty, GJM took me out to lunch and said, "remember, when you get ref reports on your papers, bring them to me". and when i did some point later, he literally went through them (and my responses) line by line.
- Figuring out how to deal with referee reports, submission strategy, etc. is a learned skill and not something you should try to navigate without advice: ask mentors, seniors in your dept, etc.
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@AnthonyLeeZhang
addendum
-the "most sophisticated crypto traders" turned out to be yolo degens like the rest of us.
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@ben_golub
As a robustness check, the authors should prove that their approach would also work for all other viruses. The details can be put in an online appendix.
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With ~40 mins to go to
@alexoimas
talk (JOIN!! , see below), a brief 🧵on what this seminar series is about and why we're doing this (1/n)
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I must not talk about Brouwer and Kakutani's fixed point theorems... Must not talk about Brouwer and Kakutani's fixed point theorems...
2.30pm: Panel Debate: Stable Market Equilibrium
@ThogardPvP
,
@NathanWorsley_
,
@malleshpai
,
@Jskybowen
Moderator:
@swp0x0
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This is a true story. i took a grad asset pricing class.
my brother (tradfi bro): hey tell me more maybe some of this will be useful for me.
me: sure. think of an asset as a point in a hilbert space.
my brother: we will never talk about finance again. CLICK.
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Somehow I feel both seen and attacked simultaneously.
academics will pack like 12 papers to read on a 3 hour flight and then skim one abstract, put on Shrek 2, and fall asleep
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That was amazing analysis by
@Mylovanov
(and friends) who are somehow thinking analytically on the side while helping their fellow citizens and suffering a massive bombing campaign. Stay safe, and hopefully we can talk (and help) more whenever this ends
Going live at 10 pm Kyiv, 3 pm EST. Oksana Syroid, Nataliia Shapoval, Timofiy Brik and myself. Todays update and analysis
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A senior colleague in a talk once put up her related literature slide, smiled at the audience, and said "and here is a list of papers i plan to read that appear related"
Is citing something that you have not read academic dishonesty?
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Indian cricket prospects all going to get messages from their mom tonight, "beta I know you want to do cricket but you can be like Saurabh and be engineer too, na?"
Saurabh Netravalkar, who had figures of 2-18 in his 4 overs against Pakistan, is currently an engineer at Oracle. He also has an MS in computer science from Cornell University.
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I saw this shocking exchange yesterday on Twitter. Person 1 posted politically controversial but reasonable position. P2 asked reasonable question. P1 gave calm reply. P2 said thank you that makes sense, I'm going to go think about that now. Ban both now!!!
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My migration story was made into a major Hollywood movie. The screenwriters took some artistic liberties (e.g., I flew over rather than took the route indicated in the movie), it captures the gist of my struggle (e.g. I did fly economy):
I just spent another afternoon perfecting a 30-minute presentation about my migration story for 9-year olds.
The presentation contains many hardships that I faced in my life such as when my parents refused to buy me a dedicated pair of giant slalom skis when I was 12 years old.
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@ben_golub
@ElliotLip
Elliot's daughter has now experienced econ refereeing too--- have a quality insight, immediately get shot down because it doesn't generalize to infinite dimensional Banach spaces.
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As a researcher in crypto I want to work on the important problems vexing everyone in this space: how should we design txn fee mechanisms? can we limit MEV without limiting chain efficiency? who is
@GwartyGwart
and how are they right about everything?
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@akbarpour_
Accept the offer and renege later if needed. I normally wouldn't recommend this but if schools are being that asshole-y then whatever.
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🚨🚨 Researching on DeFi/ Blockchains? We are seeking paper submissions for our half-day workshop at EC24 at Yale on July 8th.
We welcome research on a broad range of topics, including Transaction Fee Mechanism Design, Censorship Resistance, Mechanism Design for block
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Thanks
@jasondhartline
! Delighted to bring some virtual value to
#EC2023
(heh)... More seriously, for those of you who have thoughts on things you like/ dislike about your experiences e-attending conferences, have suggestions etc: DM/ email me!
Delighted to have
@MalleshPai
as the Virtual Chair for
#EC2023
.
@AcmSIGecom
is committed to its meetings being broadly accessible and inclusive. Not able to join us in London? Block out July 9-12 to join the virtual meeting, packed with livestreams, networking sessions, etc.
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This week
@kse_in
/
@kse_in
Seminar: the inimitable
@skominers
on "Redistribution and Marketplace Design" (joint work with
@akbarpour_
and Piotr Dworczak). Noon Eastern on 5/18. Join!! Sign up link here:
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Everything you need to know about auctions:
@ahitposter
FLASHBOTS CAN YOU PLEASE COME EXPLAIN HOW THIS AUCTION WORKS WITH A MECHANISM AND A DIAGRAM PLEASE
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I remember when, in my second year of grad school my research got me to one of my fave papers. the introduction is, err, short :)
Michel Talagrand has been awarded the Abel Prize, one of the highest honors in mathematics, for applying tools from high-dimensional geometry to complex probability problems.
@jordanacep
reports:
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Crypto OGs: what is an appropriate wedding present for a crypto friend? A rug?
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tl;dr summary (more seriously, cool dashboard + visualization
@sui414
@0xangelfish
@JadenDurnford
!)
Excited to share a new Flashbots blog post and dashboard illuminating Ethereum’s order flow market.
Links below!
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@ben_golub
Appears to be taking Gandhi's maxim of "be the change you wish to see in this world" fairly literally :)
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OH: One of the bigger benefits of putting OH in front of tweets is that you don't have all the frictions of setting up an alt.
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@BorgersTilman
When I have such fears, I normally re-read the preface of Arrow and Hahn and find myself soothed...
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RIP Konrad :(... An amazing scholar and a gentle thoughtful soul you could have wonderful conversations with... Condolences to his family and friends.
My colleague Konrad Mierendorff died on Saturday August 7th 2021 after a fall on the
#Wasenhorn
, Switzerland. Konrad was a gifted Economist, both as a researcher and a teacher. He loved the mountains and was on his own journey into Alpine climbing. 1/5
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Rani Spiegler has a fantastic book about the culture of economic theory. Looks like a wonderful read for all, highly recommended for students interested in economic theory, and also for colleagues (EC types) who want to understand us! For now, a trailer:
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And mentors of mentors of scholars (think how many of us are students/ mentees of Krishna/ Mailath/ gul/ Jackson/...). RIP Hugo Sonnenschein. Thanks for teaching my teachers how to fish.
Very few people have had as much impact on economic theory as Hugo Sonnenschein, both as scholars and as mentors of other scholars
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At the risk of either overselling or underselling this: this is a blindingly obvious paper that I really enjoyed working with
@MaxResnick1
and
@mikeneuder
on. 2 simple points.
NEW RESEARCH
"Optimizing Exit Queues for Proof-of-Stake Blockchains: A Mechanism Design Approach"
Changing validator sets over time potentially erodes proven security of fault-tolerant consensus protocols.
by
@mikeneuder
,
@malleshpai
,
@MaxResnick1
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OH at an econ cs conference "it's axiomatic in cs that all problems can be reduced to a question in ad auctions"
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@DinaPomeranz
Heh for some of our research agendas, getting 20 newspaper articles can only happen if we do something very bad. So I'll take the top 5 :)
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I didn't think that after 2 years of pandemic/ zoom fatigue, I would be excited about another zoom seminar but this was amazing. Thank you
@JeanTirole
!! Next up,
@DrDaronAcemoglu
(April 6, 12noon Eastern). Sign up details:
@kse_in
.
@JeanTirole
gave yesterday the first economics seminar in the
@kse_in
series in support of Ukraine on "Privacy and the control of citizens".
If you've missed the event, watch the video here:
Thank you
@KyivSchool
@unibirmingham
@uc3m
@MITEcon
@UBMannheim
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What a fun two days! Our third economic theory mini conference in the books.... Thanks for coming
@JuanDubra1
(also Léonie Baumann, Nicole Immorlica and Rakesh vohra!)
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For those confused this is the context (
@GuilleAngeris
also claimed there were 110 papers so far this year)
OH: “You’re really helping onboard the next 1 billion CFMM papers from economists”
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While people look at omicron data and case numbers to glean the future, let me offer some hopeful news: liquid hand soap was in stock at the local Costco today for the first time since Feb 2020.
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This paper is for all the first year econ PhD students who ask whether we see walrasian equilibria in the real world :)
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Here's a talk i gave (which they were nice enough to record) while i was there on the aggregating the wisdom of the crowd by also eliciting higher-order beliefs. (2/n)
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A cool thing about this space is that some top minds are thinking about it. And among the academics (and more generally) in the space,
@noamnisan
is top of the heap. A must listen for academics esp in the EC community wondering what there is to do round here...
🎙️This week,
@annarrose
&
@tarunchitra
chat with
@noamnisan
, exploring his journey from complexity theory to pioneering AGT, his move to blockchain and his work at
@StarkWareLtd
+ his latest work on PoS Tokenomics and more.
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Great advice. I'd add: if you have slides for your papers, post those too: people much more likely to glance at your slides.
3rd+ year PhD students: have a website! Formatting doesn't matter. Google sites or your dept website is fine; github if you're showing off.
- Include your CV + email
- List your fields/interests + any ongoing projects
- Post PDFs of recent publications + good working papers
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Can faculty attend? Asking for a friend...
Are you doing a ecoomics-related PhD?
Interested in AI/ML?
Then apply to our Summer Institute in Machine Learning!
Learn from awesome faculty
Meet other like-minded students
Get exposed to cool, new ideas
(march 24 deadline)
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⏰⏰ Just under a week to go for
@AcmSIGecom
EC Preview week!!
A quick run through of the planned activities (fully virtual) below, tl;dr:
mentoring workshop registration (free!)
preview week registration (free!):
(1/n)
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@ben_golub
@paulgp
you joke about this but apparently back in the day cake mix companies realized that their clientele found making a cake from a mix "cheating"--- so they added back some slight "baking experience" e.g. add an egg or mix some milk.
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Censorship resistance in block chains doesn't just mean that valid transactions in a blockchain get in *eventually*. For blockchains to be useful for e.g. finance they have to get in *fast*. This has been understood for a while:
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@instrumenthull
@wwwojtekk
sure, but at some point then is self-made just tautologically vacuous? like you went to a good uni--- oh you have a uni degree, not self-made. your parents have enough money to invest in your startup? not self-made.
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Power back (for now). After 36 hours. Let's see how long this lasts.
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Tymofiy is a friend and former colleague who's been doing incredible work as the president of the KSE in Ukraine to establish the kind of democracy and durable institutions we take for granted here.
You have been asking how you can act. Here it is.
"Kyiv School of Economics" (501.3(с) nonprofit registered in Washington DC) is collecting funds for humanitarian aid to Ukraine!
(USD) Euro is also accepted, please follow the QR code.
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If you're working on research projects without a not even stuck phase you're either a genius or not aiming high enough probably.
There's a phase of research I call Not Even Stuck (by analogy with physicists' Not Even Wrong), where things don't work but you don't understand the problem well enough to know what the blockers are. If you can get from there to Stuck, you've made a lot of progress.
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@robseamans
@KhoaVuUmn
If there's a sociologist in the room, "this is the first study to *rigourously* examine..." just to keep the feud running.
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One of the amazing things about this space for mechanism designers is that ideas get taken to fruition and you can see them actually get to practice (not to say we're the only people who came up with MCBP, but I'd like to believe we had a part). It's super satisfying
@_danielmarzec
@MaxResnick1
Was planning to release this ROP next week but we'd be interested to think more about it! h/t to
@0xQuintus
for sharing your note too, great stuff to get started
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@Andrew___Baker
@wwwojtekk
They're capturing back cities faster than i can learn how to pronounce them.
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A lovely (and super elegant) paper! Congratulations
@toomash
🎉🎉
In contests like rent-seeking or R&D, should the efforts of earlier movers be disclosed? The paper shows that such transparency enhances total effort, maximizing it with full transparency and minimizing it with none.
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@ben_golub
@AlexKontorovich
Unrelated: his advisor Jacob Laurie had the best sentence in his talk at icm 2012... Something to the effect of "you might think this is theory for it's own sake... it's not... it's theory for the sake of other theory". I've always wanted to use that in a talk
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Really excited for the 4th FIE4Ukr seminar: starring the amazing
@S_Stantcheva
!! Wednesday 9 Pacific/ 11 central/ Noon eastern US time.
Please join for
Frontiers in Economics 4 Ukraine seminar
Wednesday at 5pm BST (6pm CET)
@S_Stantcheva
@HarvardEcon
on wealth & property taxation
Chaired by
George Zodrow (Rice)
Register here:
#FIE4Ukr
@KyivSchool
@kse_in
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it's actually a bit worse than that--- even if you *can* move, in most cases actually moving requires changing cities/ uprooting family/ partner's career ...
in industry, you probably find another job in the same area (silicon valley, nyc etc)
This is the real blackpill of academia: lack of mobility. This is especially true *after* tenure, when the bar to get hired becomes much higher. Certain celebrities can easily jump from top school to top school, but most mere mortals are locked in early. Better like where you are
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Wait so there are people who think Tarun's OH is stuff he actually overhears rather than giving him plausible deniability? "Asking for a friend"...
BONUS: there will be an additional jiujitsu match between
@socrates1024
and
@tarunchitra
tonight at the comedy, opening with a TEE debate ✌️🥵🍿
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did you ever stop to think that your referees aren't reading your paper because they're wasting all their time on twitter?
Why would you worry about your referee reading your Twitter when they didn't even read your paper?
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This was fun! Some folks we know (
@skominers
,
@Tim_Roughgarden
) many I didn't. Very accessibly scratched the surface of some fascinating questions...
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One of those occasions where you don't want deep liquidity...
Things got ugly at the flashbots bbq last night.
@0x94305
had a few too many to drink, stumbled and fell in the pool.
Call that loss versus rebalancing.
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If you're a researcher or a researchoooor interested in DeFi and want to work with awesome folks (academic and industry researchers and a great cohort of fellows) on some of the most interesting problems DeFi problems of today, apply!
📢 A big thanks to the 2024-2025 TLDR Research Council for volunteering their expertise to mentor fellows and advance DeFi research!
• Dan Robinson,
@danrobinson
(Paradigm)
• Danning Sui,
@sui414
(Flashbots)
• Guille Angeris,
@GuilleAngeris
(Bain Capital Crypto)
• John
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@ShengwuLi
I have to disagree (if only because, e.g. you and your advisors etc give amazing talks and are presumably great teachers). My suspicion--- giving good talks and/or teaching well, just like research, requires effort. Too many folks substitute away...
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OH: If crypto has 1 contribution to society it's gathering all the r****** in one place and giving them toy problems to work on so they don't bother people who actually work on important stuff
(Funny because I was told something similar about econ theorists once)
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@M_ttM_
@IvanWerning
Cass rules I think are fairly optimal (i'd argue max 10 mins of intro prob less, max 3 refs if they're very relevant)
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see full list below! hired most likely by some combo of stan reiter, mort kamien and nancy schwartz. (cc:
@CaltechEconThry
)
Myerson, Holmstrom, and Milgrom all being juniors at MEDS at the same time
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The Monty hall problem was a fixture on the basic Kellogg prob & stat core class when I was a grader... Many got it
wrong, none showed this quality of out of the box thinking...
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@ben_golub
wait im still very confused. how can a straw have two holes? does this community think a donut has two holes?
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A general econ-twitter request: i teach a topics elective to undergrads, and decided to change it up this year. My new goal, feasibility permitting is to try and use a crypto (and associated DeFi stuff) as a running theme/ example to illustrate micro-theory ideas...
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Front run= steal and be first to banger tweets. Back run= Know others' tweets in advance to be first reply guy. Liquidation= be first to cancel someone for making dumb comment.
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(HT:
@YingHuaHe
but since he's never going to tweet this observation) An alternate title: "The advisor as a plumber" (with apologies to Al Roth and Esther Duflo)
Real footage of an adviser fixing the first draft of his PhD student
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This should be a great way to spend an ~hour a week for the next 2-3 months (more if you go to the course page and also try the problem sets)... strongly recommended!
(maybe i'm asking for too much but are those lecture notes coming soon
@algo_class
?)
Lecture 1 of my Foundations of Blockchains lecture series is now available: (Will try to post one new lecture a week for the next 2-3 months.)
tl;dr thread below:
1/12
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Going around today. Reminds me of the time
@msiniscalchi
judged me for pineapple on my pizza :)
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@Aaroth
@geomblog
@KLdivergence
@Aaron_Horowitz
This is the tight confidence interval. Outliers in both directions. Eg
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