Afshin Nikzad

Assistant Professor of Economics

University of Southern California


Google Scholar

I am an economic theorist with a focus on market design, mechanism design, and matching markets.



Journal Papers


Optimal Allocation via Waitlists: Simplicity through Information Design
The Review of Economic Studies, forthcoming
with Itai Ashlagi and Faidra Monachou.

Efficiency and Equity in Dynamic Matching: Extreme Waitlist Policies
Management Science, forthcoming, with Philipp Strack.

On Rank Dominance of Tie-Breaking Rules
Theoretical Economics, 2023, with Maxwell Allman and Itai Ashlagi.

Matching in Dynamic Imbalanced Markets
The Review of Economic Studies, 2022, with Itai Ashlagi, Philipp Strack.

Rank-optimal Assignments in Uniform Markets
Theoretical Economics, 2022
A short proof by Jay Sethuraman based on a theorem of Aldous

Global Kidney Chains
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021
with Mohammad Akbarpour, Michael Reese, Alvin Roth.

Persuading a Pessimist: Simplicity and Robustness
Games and Economic Behavior, 2021

Approximate Random Allocation Mechanisms
The Review of Economic Studies, 2020, with Mohammad Akbarpour.

What Matters in Tie-Breaking Rules? How Competition Guides Design
Journal of Economic Theory, 2020, with Itai Ashlagi.

Assigning more Students to Their Top Choices: A Comparison of Tiebreaking Rules
Games and Economic Behavior, 2019, with Itai Ashlagi, Assaf Romm.

Budget Feasible Procurement Auctions
Operations Research, 2018, with Nima Anari and Gagan Goel

Approximation Algorithms for Computing Maximin Share Allocations
ACM Transactions on Algorithms, 2017
with Georgios Amanatidis, Evangelos Markakis, Amin Saberi


Working Papers


Multi-criteria Allocation Mechanisms: Constraints and Comparative Statics
Working paper. This version: Jan 2024

Constrained Majorization: Applications in Mechanism Design
Working paper. Extended Abstract in EC 2022

Thickness and Competition in On-demand Service Platforms
Working paper. This version: Dec 2022

Financing Transplant Costs of the Poor: A Dynamic Model of Global Kidney Exchange
Afshin Nikzad, Mohammad Akbarpour, Michael Reese, Alvin Roth


Selected Conference Papers


Expressiveness, Cost, and Collectivism: How the Design of Preference Languages Shapes Participation in Algorithmic Decision-Making
The CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2023
with Samantha Robertson, Tonya Nguyen, Cathy Hu, Catherine Albiston, and Niloufar Salehi

Constrained Majorization: Applications in Mechanism Design
Economics and Computation (EC), 2022

Optimal Dynamic Allocation: Simplicity Through Information Design
Economics and Computation (EC), 2021, with Itai Ashlagi and Faidra Monachou

What Matters in School Choice Tie-Breaking? How Competition Guides Design
Economics and Computation (EC), 2016, with Itai Ashlagi

Reservation Exchange Markets for Internet Advertising
International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP), 2016
with Gagan Goel, Stefano Leonardi, Vahab Mirrokni, and Renato Paes-Leme

Assigning more Students to Their Top Choices: A Tie-Breaking Rule Comparison
Economics and Computation (EC), 2015, with Itai Ashlagi and Assaf Romm

Mechanism Design for Crowdsourcing: An Optimal 1-1/e Competitive Budget-Feasible Mechanism for Large Markets
Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), 2014, with Nima Anari and Gagan Goel

Mechanism Design for Crowdsourcing Markets with Heterogeneous Tasks
Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing, 2014
with Gagan Goel and Adish Singla