Game theory · Mechanism design · Social economics
I work on strategic behaviour in markets and in populations, with attention to how incentives, private information, and social identity condition the outcomes that institutions are able to implement.
Assistant Professor of Economics
Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode
PhD, Evolutionary Game Theory, IIT Bombay
Latest postSolo authorship after generative AI · 20 Aug 2026
Latest columnAsymmetry, the elephant in the room · Frontline, 25 Feb 2026
★ Warren Samuels Prize, Association for Social Economics, 2026
★ Teaching Excellence Award, IIM Kozhikode, 2025
/ 01 — About
My work develops in two connected directions. The first concerns mechanism design and incentive theory, approached through a theoretical lens. I begin from phenomena observed in the world and ask whether a mechanism can be found that drives them, developing and extending economic theory where the existing apparatus falls short. This has meant studying how a neutral third party such as the law can induce a focal point among many possible outcomes, how blame is attributed when responsibility is spread across many hands, and how informal labour contracts can reach efficiency without courts to enforce them. The second concerns identity and social behaviour, where I examine how identity, consumption, conflict, and social networks shape economic choices and the norms that groups reproduce over time.
A single question runs through both directions, namely which outcomes remain reachable once we take seriously the information, the incentives, and the social structure that agents actually face. Over more than a decade I have carried the same apparatus into advisory work, including mechanism and incentive design for AI products, tokenomics for digital platforms, financial and supply-chain restructuring in the public sector, and capacity building for government and industry. My doctoral training in evolutionary game theory continues to shape how I think about stability, adjustment, and the persistence of norms.
/ 02 — Research
The programme is organised around two research pillars that share a common set of tools from game theory and mechanism design.
Pillar A · row player
Strategic decision systems, norms, and the mechanisms that sustain them, studied by extending economic theory to account for phenomena observed in the world. Recent work asks how a neutral third party such as the law induces a focal point, how blame is attributed among many hands, and how informal labour contracts achieve efficiency without courts.
Pillar B · column player
Identity and consumption, conflict and corruption, and the place of social networks in economic decision making. The work treats social identity as a determinant of choice and of the norms that populations sustain.
/ 03 — Publications
A selection of published work and papers in progress. A complete and current list appears on Google Scholar and SSRN.
Peer-reviewed
International Journal of Development and Conflict, 15(2), 146–167
International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 37(1)
with S. Rajan and K. Gangopadhyay
Statistical Methods in Medical Research, 31(11), 2137–2163
with S. S. Patel, S. Bonnerjee and S. Roy
Resonance: Journal of Science Education, 27(5), 867–875
Computational Economics, 52(2), 493–519
with D. Mukherjee and K. M. Rao
Dynamic Games and Applications, 2(4), 376–384
Working papers
Revise and resubmit, Studies in Comparative International Development
with Nandagopan
Under review, Mathematical Social Sciences
Under review, International Journal of Game Theory
Under review, Scientometrics
Under review, Review of Income and Wealth
Under review, Mathematics of Operations Research
Under review, Mathematical Social Sciences
Under review, The Journal of Development Studies
Under review, FinanzArchiv / European Journal of Public Finance
Under review, Scientometrics
Under review, Review of Development Economics
Under review, Journal of Quantitative Economics
with V. Kala
In progress
Selecting a single allocation from a set-valued solution such as the core by adding one dummy player, without altering the characteristic function of the original players.
with G. Achuthankutty and K. S. Mallikarjuna Rao
Re-examines Basu’s conclusion that no one can be held responsible for the harm in the Samaritan’s curse, within a framework of embedded morality built on Smith and Wilson’s formalisation of Adam Smith’s moral psychology. Once harm is measured against the outcome of self-interested play, the cause of the harm is traceable in every case, and collective moral failures emerge as harms with authors rather than as calamities.
with T. Ranganathan and R. Sil
A principal who can neither monitor effort nor enforce contracts in court hires a connected core of workers, whose social ties sustain internal discipline, and lets it subcontract solo workers from the open market out of a fixed completion-contingent wage pot. Solo effort saturates at a finite critical mass, which bounds team size, a connected core dominates any solo-only team under a closed-form condition on its effort capacity, a stable equilibrium with positive solo employment exists once the wage pot exceeds an explicit threshold, and an unconnected pool cannot form a core because building the necessary relationships is a stag hunt whose risk-dominant outcome is non-coordination.
with R. Patra
Book chapter, “The interplay of identity and social network,” in Social Network Analytics, Elsevier Academic Press, 2019. A complete list appears on Google Scholar and SSRN.
/ 04 — Blog and columns
Occasional columns for the national press, and a blog of shorter arguments and research notes on game theory, data, generative AI, and academic life. The most recent items appear here; the complete collection has its own page.
Columns and commentary
Frontline · Columns25 February 2026
On the decision to keep the UGC rules on caste discrimination in abeyance, and why formally neutral grievance procedures favour those with greater social capital, procedural familiarity, and institutional backing.
Read the columnDeccan Herald · Opinion7 October 2025
Why a messaging app that challenges WhatsApp faces an assurance game rather than a product contest. Each user’s best choice depends on what everyone else is expected to choose, so a better product alone rarely dislodges an incumbent.
Read the pieceThe Economic Times · ET CommentarySeptember 2025
Why the sudden change in H-1B rules is unlikely to bring the most valued professionals home. Firms relocate the workers they value most to other markets, and the workforce that returns is the one they are least willing to invest in.
Read the pieceRecent posts
Research has been a team game for about forty years. In economics and management the trend reversed from 2025, and the reversal coincides with the arrival of generative AI.
A post arguing that Shapley values are misleading at best and actively harmful at worst has been circulating with approval. Half of what it says is correct, and has been for a while.
Teaching the winner’s curse and Rubinstein bargaining to a room of senior Group A officers, and watching both refuse to behave.
I was never taught with cases and have rarely used them. Twelve years into teaching in business schools, here is my first published case study, on MG Windsor’s pricing and battery-as-a-service.
/ 05 — Teaching & capacity building
I teach game theory to management and doctoral students and design experiential material that lets learners reason through strategic situations directly. I also deliver executive and government training at scale.
Courses
Strategic-form and extensive-form analysis, information economics, and mechanism design, taught within the PGP and doctoral programmes at IIM Kozhikode.
Experiential
Interactive exercises for teaching strategic reasoning, including auction, ultimatum, sealed-bid, and willingness-to-pay games, deployed as single-file applications for live classroom use.
Supervision
Supervision of masters theses and participation in doctoral advisory committees across economics and allied areas.
Capacity building
Design and delivery of training in economics and decision making, with more than five hundred hours delivered to government departments, public-sector firms, and universities.
Selected training and capacity-building clients
/ 06 — Consulting
I advise organisations and public institutions on problems where incentives, information, and coordination determine what can be achieved. Engagements draw on the same tools that underpin the research, and they span AI product design, digital platforms, and public-sector reform.
01
Design and evaluation of allocation, procurement, and reward mechanisms, including recurring and multi-unit settings.
02
Alignment of incentives in programme and policy design, with attention to participation, information, and distributional effects.
03
Reward architecture and equilibrium analysis for digital platforms and games, including free-rider deterrence and retention.
04
Structuring of negotiation and bargaining processes, including protocols, sequencing, and the disclosure of information.
05
Applied analytics for decision making, including attribution modelling and the design of measurement and evaluation.
06
Independent review of proposed mechanisms, incentive schemes, and programme designs before they are implemented.
Selected engagements
Senior game theory consultant. Design of mechanism-theoretic frameworks for AI agent products.
Principal investigator. Need analysis, financial restructuring, and supply-chain redesign for a public-sector cooperative.
Mechanism design, intervention design, and outcome evaluation for an entrepreneurship scheme.
Reward mechanism and tokenomics for a Web3 social network, with equilibrium analysis of contribution incentives and free-rider deterrence.
Chief game theorist, non-executive. In-game economics and tokenomics for a mobile game, including retention mechanism design.
A multi-touch marketing attribution algorithm delivered as a deployable analytical framework.
Co-inventor, Indian patent application 202321053247 A, an AI system for insurance product recommendation.
/ 07 — Contact
I am glad to hear from prospective collaborators, doctoral applicants, editors, and organisations considering a consulting engagement.