Contact Information:
415 Calhoun Hall
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN 37240
Email: alper.nakkas[at]vanderbilt.edu
Personal Information:
Date of Birth: August 07, 1979
Sex: Male
Citizenship: Turkey
Visa Status: F-1
Languages: English (fluent), Turkish (native)
Teaching and Research Interests:
Research Interests: Microeconomic Theory, Industrial Organization, Law and Economics
Teaching Interests: Microeconomics, Game Theory, Industrial Organization, Mathematics
Education:
2005-now Ph.D. candidate in Economics, Vanderbilt University
2005-2007 M.A. in Economics, Vanderbilt University
2003-2006 M.Sc. in Economics, Istanbul Bilgi University,
2003-2006 Title of thesis: "Local Decisions Global Rights",
1999-2003 B.A. in Economics, Marmara University
Honors, scholarships and fellowships:
2005-now Vanderbilt University Fellowship
2003-2006 Istanbul Bilgi University Scholarship
Teaching Experience:
2009-Sum Intermediate Microeconomic Theory, Vanderbilt University.
Instructor.
2009-Fall Mathematics for Economics (PhD level), Vanderbilt University,
Teaching Assistant for Professor Quan Wen.
2009-Fall Microeconomic Theory (MA level), Vanderbilt University,
Teaching Assistant for Professor Joel Rodrigue.
2009-Spr Intermediate Macroeconomic Theory, Vanderbilt University,
Teaching Assistant for Professor Hyeok Jeong.
2008-Fall Introduction to Microeconomics, Vanderbilt University,
Teaching Assistant for Professor Stephen Buckles.
2008-Spr Strategic Analysis, Vanderbilt University,
Teaching Assistant for Professor Myrna Wooders.
2007-Fall Industrial Organization, Vanderbilt University,
Teaching Assistant for Professor Jennifer Reinganum.
2007-Spr Corporate Finance, Vanderbilt University,
Teaching Assistant for Professor Jong H. Kim.
2006-Fall Strategic Analysis, Vanderbilt University,
Teaching Assistant for Professor Myrna Wooders.
Work Experience:
2009-Sum Research Assistant for Professor Mumin Kurtulus, Vanderbilt University.
2008-Sum Research Assistant for Professor Mumin Kurtulus, Vanderbilt University.
2008-Spr Research Assistant for Professor Mumin Kurtulus, Vanderbilt University.
2007-Sum Research Assistant for Professor Marta Paige Skiba, Vanderbilt University.
2005-2006 Research Assistant for the Chief Economist, HSBC Turkey.
Conferences and Seminars:
2008-July The 19th Stony Brook Game Theory Festival of the Game Theory Society, New York, USA
(Workshop on Implementation of Cooperative Solution Concepts – The Nash Program, in Honor of John Nash on the Occasion of his 80th Birthday)
2008-June The Ninth International Meeting of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare, Montreal, Canada
2008-June The 15th World Congress of the International Economic Association, Istanbul, Turkey
2006-Nov Graduate Student Conference, Washington University at St. Louis, USA
2006-July The Eighth International Meeting of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare, Istanbul, Turkey
2004-May Murat Sertel Memorial Conference on Economic Theory, Istanbul, Turkey
2003-Dec The First Murat Sertel Student Fest, Istanbul, Turkey
Working Papers:
Communication is central for competition. In two sided markets,communication freedom is mainly represented by the ability that every agent in the economy can reach all the agents on the other side of the market without incurring any cost. However, not every competition environment has this symmetry or, in other words, this freedom. We construct a model in which homogenous sellers simultaneously negotiate with buyers, who have different valuations, in the presence of communication restrictions represented by a network. We find that similar network structures may lead to different equilibrium outcomes. In our setting, not only positions of the agents in a network but also names of the agents who captures those positions are crucial for equilibrium outcome.
(joint with Mumin Kurtulus)
Retail assortment planning can have a tremendous impact on the retailer's bottom line performance. Recently, retailers have started to rely on their leading manufacturers for recommendations regarding the assortment to be ordered to the consumers in a particular category, a trend often referred to as category captainship. Our research investigates the consequences of using category captains for assortment selection decisions. We develop a game theoretic model where multiple manufacturers sell their products to consumers through a single retailer. We compare the models where the retailer selects the assortment in the category with a model where the retailer relies on a category captain for assortment decisions in return of a target contract. We show that while category captainship can provide significant benefits to the retailer and the category captain, it does not always benefit the non-captain manufacturers. Our results have implications regarding the implementation of the category captainship practices.
This paper considers a complete information pretrial settlement bargaining game in which an insolvent defendant negotiates with two plaintiffs. As opposed to Spier (2002), it is shown that the parties can always settle even though there are bargaining externalities generated by the insolvency of the defendant.
There is a well known conflict between individual desire and social efficiency. This study focuses on the role of description in the individual-oriented problems of preference aggregation. We represent rights of individuals via a graph and by using graph theory tools we show that structure of the alternative set generates the well known Sen's impossibility result. Moreover, we identify a local Pareto condition and show that it is possible to have a liberal social welfare function which is efficient.
Work in Progress:
Are Category Captainship Practices Anti-Competitive? Theory and Practice
(joint with Mumin Kurtulus)
Category captainship is a practice where retailers rely one of their leading manufacturers in a category on recommendations about category decisions such as category assortment. It has been hypothesized that category captainship can result in variety reduction in the category, a phenomenon often referred to as competitive exclusion. We consider a stylized model and compare the retailer's variety decision to the variety recommended by a category captain. We find that the variety reduction in the category is not necessarily due to competitive exclusion.
Price Discrimination in Stackelberg Model with Asymmetric Information
This paper focuses on the tradeoff between incentives created by asymmetric information and price discrimination by constructing a Stackelberg competition model with interdependent markets in the presence of demand uncertainty.
Time Constrained Sequential Games
Economic rationality assumption plays an important role in game theory. To assume that players have ability to calculate the reactions of the other players has crucial importance for equilibrium analysis. However, even for an experienced economist it can be difficult and time consuming to analyze complex games and derive the optimal strategy. This paper considers games of complete information with sequential moves in which the players have time restrictions to decide their actions in each decision node and characterizes the equilibrium with respect to an exogenously given decision function and subgame perfection.
Professional Activities:
Referee for Journal of Public Economic Theory
Referee for Economics Bulletin
Member of the "Council of the Economics Graduate Students" (CEGS), Vanderbilt University, USA (2006-2007)
