I am interested in Economic Theory, especially in information economics (the analysis of the strategic decisions of agents to acquire, share, and use information) and in how information asymmetries affect incentives.
João Ramos
Assistant Professor of Finance and Business Economics
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Office: HOH 815,
3670 Trousdale Pkwy,
Los Angeles, CA 90089,
United States
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Email: joao.ramos@usc.edu
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RESEARCH
Published and Forthcoming
Acquiring Information Through Peers
American Economic Review, July 2020
joint with Bernard Herskovic
Link to Paper
Online Appendix
Goodwill in Communication
Journal of Economic Theory, July 2022
joint with Elliot Lipnowski and Aditya Kuvalekar
Link to Paper
Income-Based Affirmative Action in College Admissions
The Economic Journal, February 2023
joint with Luiz Brotherhood Bernard Herskovic
Link to Paper
Popular Press (Daily Bruin)
Popular Press (Anderson Review)
The Wrong Kind of Information
The Rand Journal of Economics, May 2023
joint with Aditya Kuvalekar and Johannes Schneider
Link to Paper
A Road to Efficiency Through Communication and Commitment
American Economic Review, September 2023
joint with Ala Avoyan
Link to Paper
Replication Package and Online Appendix
Political Accountability Under Moral Hazard
American Journal of Political Science, April 2024
joint with Avidit Acharya and Elliot Lipnowski
Link to Paper​
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Working Papers
We consider a team-production environment where all participants are motivated by career concerns, and where a team's joint productive outcome may have different reputational implications for different team members. In this context, we characterize equilibrium disclosure of team-outcomes when team-disclosure choices aggregate individual decisions through some deliberation protocol. In contrast with individual disclosure problems, we show that equilibria often involve partial disclosure. Furthermore, we study the effort-incentive properties of equilibrium disclosure strategies implied by different deliberation protocols; and show that the partial disclosure of team outcomes may improve individuals' incentives to contribute to the team. Finally, we study the design of deliberation protocols and characterize productive environments where effort incentives are maximized by unilateral decision protocols or more consensual deliberation procedures.
We study a continuous-time model of partnership, with persistence and imperfect state monitoring. Partners exert private efforts to shape the stock of fundamentals, which drives the pro ts of the partnership, and the profits are the only signal they observe. The near-optimal strongly symmetric equilibria are non-Markovian and are characterized by a novel differential equation that describes the supremum of equilibrium incentives for any level of relational capital. Imperfect monitoring of the fundamentals helps sustain incentives, due to deferred incentives, and increases the partnership's value (Sand in the wheels). Good profit outcomes rally the partners to further increase effort when relational capital is low, but lead them to coast and decrease effort when relational capital is high. Even partnerships with high fundamentals may unravel after a short spell of terrible signals (Beatles' break-up).
TEACHING
French - Mother Tongue
Teaching at USC Marshall
Microeconomics for Business
Selected Issues in Economic Theory II (PhD level)
Teaching at Queen Mary university of London
Strategy, Leadership and Management of Investment Banking Firms
Microeconomic Theory II (PhD level)
Fall 2016, 2022, 2023, 2024
Spring 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020
Spring 2021, 2022
Spring 2022