Hi! 


I am a theorist studying how firms and other organizations respond to environments where behavioral biases, non-standard preferences, or informational frictions are prevalent. 


I am currently a postdoc at the Institute for Microeconomics at the University of Bonn.


My email is aespitia@uni-bonn.de. 

Research

Working papers

Confidence and Organizations

In many environments, professionals have miscalibrated beliefs about their skills and knowledge, which potentially compromises the quality of their work. Why might a firm be better off hiring an individual known to be over- or under-confident? In this paper, I argue that such biases can alleviate agency frictions. I present a model in which an agent uses his private information to make a choice on behalf of a principal. Players differ in their preferred action in a given state of the world. In this setting, I consider what I call the belief design problem: how would the principal like the agent to interpret his private information? I provide conditions under which the solution to this problem can be interpreted as the principal preferring a well-calibrated, an underconfident, or an overconfident agent. A well-calibrated agent is strictly preferred by the principal if and only if the expected difference in the players' preferred actions does not vary with the signal realization. Overconfidence is optimal when the principal would like to adjust the action beyond what  a well-calibrated agent would do.


Work in progress

Robust contracts under social preferences (with H. Castro-Pires)

When to request a test? (with E. Muñoz-Rodríguez)

Research careers



Teaching

University of Bonn

Topics in Microeconomic Theory (M.Sc.) - Lecturer

Behavioral Economics (M.Sc.) - Lecturer


Northwestern University

Business Analytics I, II (MBA) - Teaching Assistant

Public Economics (MBA) - Teaching Assistant

Ethics and Leadership (MBA/Executive MBA) - Teaching Assistant


Universidad del Rosario

Microeconomics I (B.Sc.) - Lecturer

Mathematical Economics (B.Sc.) - Lecturer

Mathematical Economics (M.Sc./Ph.D.) - Teaching Assistant

Education

Ph.D., Managerial Economics & Strategy - Kellogg School of Management - Northwestern University (Evanston - USA, 2022)

Chairs: David Besanko and Luis Rayo

M.Sc., Managerial Economics & Strategy - Kellogg School of Management - Northwestern University (Evanston - USA, 2017)

M.Sc., Economics (with distinction) - London School of Economics (London - UK, 2015)

B.Sc., Finance - Universidad del Rosario (Bogota - Colombia, 2012)

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