Yair Antler
Welcome!
I am an Associate Professor at the Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University. I am also affiliated with the CEPR.
Research interests: Microeconomic theory, behavioural economics, industrial organization, search and matching.
Email: yair.an(at)gmail.com
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My CV can be found here.
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Publications
1. An Experimental Analysis of the Prize-Probability Tradeoff in Stopping Problem, forthcoming, Review of Economics and Statistics.
(with Ayala Arad)
(link, appendix)
2. Multilevel Marketing: Pyramid-Shaped Schemes or Exploitative Scams? (2023). Theoretical Economics, 18, 633-668.
(link, older version (2021), older version (2018))
3. Sequential Learning (2023). American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 15, 399-433. (with Daniel Bird and Santiago Oliveros).
(link)
4. Searching Forever After (2022). American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 14, 558-590. (with Benjamin Bachi).
(link)
5. Multilateral Contracting with Manipulation (2021). Economic Journal, 639, 2693-2725.
(link)
6. No One Likes to Be Second Choice (2019). Economic Journal, 619, 1119-1138.
(link)
7. Two-Sided Matching with Endogenous Preferences (2015). American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 7, 241-258.
(link)
Multilevel Marketing: Pyramid-Shaped Schemes or Exploitative Scams?
We identify the conditions on the tendency of agents to spread information by word of mouth, under which a principal can design a pyramid scam to exploit a network of agents whose beliefs are coarse. We find that a pyramid scam is sustainable only if its underlying reward scheme compensates the participants on multiple levels of recruitments (e.g., for recruiting new members and for recruitments made by these new members). Motivated by the growing discussion on the legitimacy of multilevel marketing schemes and their resemblance to pyramid scams, we compare the two phenomena based on their underlying compensation structure.