Before joining Caltech, I earned a B.A. in Economics from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the Higher School of Economics (2021), and an M.A. in Economics from the New Economic School (MAE'23). From 2019 to 2024, I was affiliated with the International Laboratory of Game Theory and Decision Making (HSE), most recently as a Junior Research Fellow.
Olga Rospuskova
I am a PhD student in Social Science at Caltech. My research focuses on strategic interaction, with an emphasis on microeconomic theory, game theory, and social networks. I am also interested in experimental economics.
Working Papers
Local coordination and the geometry of networks
(joint with Tom Hutchcroft and Omer Tamuz).
We study a pure coordination game on a large social network. Coordination is local. We ask when equilibria can be highly efficient. This means that most neighbors choose the same action. We give a necessary and sufficient geometric condition for when this is possible. We also construct equilibria that achieve it.
Publications
Robustness to manipulations in school choice
(joint with Alexander S. Nesterov and Sofia Rubtcova), Social Choice and Welfare, 2024.
Many schools across the world rely on centralized admissions systems. A key problem is that some mechanisms give students incentives to manipulate reports, which can distort outcomes and harm others. We compare mechanisms using robustness to manipulations, measuring how much a student can expand the set of schools they can reach via a misreport. This strengthens existing manipulability comparisons and helps rationalize recent reforms.