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.



Published papers


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 Tiebreaking Rule Comparison
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


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

Optimal Dynamic Allocation: Simplicity through Information Design
R&R in The Review of Economic Studies, Extended Abstract in EC 2021,
with Itai Ashlagi and Faidra Monachou.

Thickness and Competition in On-demand Service Platforms
Working paper, new version.

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