Assoc. Prof. Aniko Öry, Ph.D.

Dynamic Games

During her stay at CES, Aniko Öry will pursue two lines of research. The first investigates dynamic price competition with capacity constraints, with a particular focus on airline markets. In these markets, firms often rely on simplified pricing heuristics to manage complexity. In joint work with Kevin Williams (Yale), Aniko Öry introduces the notion of a heuristic equilibrium, where firms use simplified and mis-specified models – for example, ignoring substitution effects or failing to update beliefs about competitors based on observed actions. The aim is to quantify the gap in market outcomes between this heuristic model and a benchmark rational equilibrium model with firms under perfect information. Using rich data from U.S. airlines, this work aims to offer new insights for competition policy and to contribute to how we model firm behavior in dynamic settings more broadly.

The second strand of research is concerned with studying a dynamic game that models whistleblowing. With coauthors Ayca Kaya (University of Miami) and Anne-Katrin Roesler (University of Toronto), she investigates a dynamic setting in which agents (1) privately and independently may receive verifiable evidence over time, and (2) at any instant, choose whether to disclose the evidence (whistleblow) or delay reporting. Agents are uncertain whether other agents have already received information or are still uninformed. Reporting comes at a cost (e.g., retaliation) and yields a benefit that depends on the number of informed agents at the time of the report, and whether an agent is the first to report or merely corroborates another agent's report. The project aims to understand the incentives to disclose information or delay reporting, the resulting inefficiencies, and potential policy interventions to mitigate delays.

Aniko Öry is an Associate Professor of Economics at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses broadly on microeconomic theory, dynamic games, and industrial organization. Before joining CMU, she was an Associate Professor of Marketing at Yale University. She received a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at the Cowles Foundation at Yale.