Caroline Thomas

Biography

Caroline was born in the Lebanon and grew up in Germany and France. She moved to the UK to study Philosophy and Economics at University College London. There, she developed a particular interest in questions of distributive justice and social choice and went on to do post-graduate studies in Economics. Her early graduate research focused on models of electoral competition and information-aggregation. It is in the course of reading groups that she discovered an affinity for dynamic games. She currently uses those to study the dynamics of information-acquisition when individuals interact or compete with each other.

Caroline’s research is in microeconomic theory and game theory. Her main research project focuses on strategic experimentation when individuals are in competition with one-another. When information about the quality of an option arrives only gradually, how do individuals optimally search for and learn about the best alternative for themselves?

Sometimes we need to spend time learning about the quality of a potential match – for instance a house, a car, a job, a spouse. We can only explore options that are currently on the market, and if we leave one option to explore a different one, we may lose access to the first, because someone else may meanwhile have acquired it. How do we reconcile wanting to learn about which option suits us best, and being rushed in our choice by the presence of others interested in the same object? Are there informational benefits from the interaction with others? When do informational losses occur?

In her latest paper Caroline identifies new types of strategic incentives that arise in the competitive environments just described. The focus of her current research is to find out precisely what it is about the competition between individuals that gives rise to these new strategic incentives. Caroline also works on repeated games and multidimensional contests.