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Florian Brandl

University of Bonn · flori-remove-an.brandl@uni-bonn.de

I am a professor at the Institute for Microeconomics and the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics at the University of Bonn. Previously, I was a postdoctoral research scholar at the Economics Departments of Princeton University and Stanford University. I obtained a Ph.D. degree in mathematics from the Technical University of Munich under the supervision of Felix Brandt. My research interests cover various areas of microeconomic theory including game theory, fair division, and dynamic decision problems.

In the summer of 2026, we are hosting a Trimester Program on Advances in Mechanism Design in Bonn. Also check out the COMSOC Video Seminar, which I am co-organizing.



News

New preprint available: On the Inefficiency of Social Learning.
I am honored to be awarded the Social Choice and Welfare Prize, alongside of Mengling Li.
I joined Theoretical Economics as an associate editor.
I will give an invited talk at the workshop Mathematics of Subjective Probability.
An updated version of my lecture notes for decision theory is available.
I will give an invited talk at the Symposium 75 years of Nash equilibrium.
Updated preprint available: Patience Ensures Fairness.
New preprint available: The Social Learning Barrier.
I will give an invited talk at the Workshop Random Dynamical Systems, with applications in biology.
New preprint available: Disinformation in the Wald Model.
New preprint available: Patience Ensures Fairness.
I will give an invited talk at the Vienna Workshop on Social Choice and Fairness.
Lecture notes available: Introduction to Decision Theory.
New preprint available: A Robust Characterization of Nash Equilibrium.
I will serve as a program committee member for COMSOC 2023.
I will serve as an area chair for EC 2023.
Our paper Approval Voting under Dichotomous Preferences: A Catalogue of Characterizations is now published at JET.
New preprint available: A Natural Adaptive Process for Collective Decision-Making.
Our paper "Funding Public Projects: A Case for the Nash Product Rule" received the Best Student Paper Award at WINE 2021!
Upcoming presentations: Oxford Workshop on Global Priorities Research, D-TEA 2021, New Directions in Social Choice, and Hausdorff Center for Mathematics Symposium.
I have joined the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics and the Department of Economics at the University of Bonn!
New preprints available: Belief-Averaging and Relative Utilitarianism: Savage Meets Arrow and Efficient, Fair, and Incentive-Compatible Healthcare Rationing.
Upcoming presentations: Virtual Conference on Social Choice Theory and Applications, SET: Seminars in Economic Theory, and Online Social Choice Seminar Series.
A preprint of a new paper with Haris Aziz on probabilistic allocation under constraints is now available.
A new preprint of our paper Funding Public Projects: A Case for the Nash Product Rule is now available.
I joined the Economics Department at Princeton University as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow.
Our paper Arrovian Aggregation of Convex Preferences has been accepted for publication in Econometrica.
A preprint of our paper Simple Characterizations of Approval Voting is now available.
Our paper Strategic Abstention based on Preference Extensions: Positive Results and Computer-Generated Impossibilities has been accepted for publication in JAIR.
A preprint of our paper Donor Coordination: Collective Distribution of Individual Contributions is now available.
Felix Brandt will present our paper Consistent Probabilistic Social Choice in the Highlights Beyond EC session at EC 2019.
I moved to Stanford University as a visiting postdoctoral scholar.

    Publications

    Working Papers

    On the Inefficiency of Social Learning
    With W. Huang and A. Jain. Working paper (February 2026)
    [pdf] [arxiv]
    2026
    The Social Learning Barrier
    Working paper (R&R at Econometrica) (November 2025)
    [pdf] [arxiv] [video]
    2025
    Dividing a cake for the irrationally entitled
    With A. Mackenzie. Working paper (August 2025)
    [pdf]
    2025
    Patience Ensures Fairness
    With A. Mackenzie. Working paper (February 2025)
    [pdf]
    2025
    Disinformation in the Wald Model
    With X. Shi. Working paper (July 2024)
    [pdf]
    2024

    Journal Articles

    Efficient and Fair Healthcare Rationing
    With H. Aziz. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 80, 2024
    [pdf]
    2024
    An Axiomatic Characterization of Nash Equilibrium
    With F. Brandt. Theoretical Economics, 19(4):1473–1504, 2024
    [pdf] [arxiv]
    2024
    A Natural Adaptive Process for Collective Decision-Making
    With F. Brandt. Theoretical Economics, 19(2):667-703, 2024
    [pdf] [arxiv]
    2024
    Approval Voting under Dichotomous Preferences: A Catalogue of Characterizations
    With D. Peters. Journal of Economic Theory, 205, 2022
    [pdf]
    2022
    The Vigilant Eating Rule: A General Approach for Probabilistic Economic Design with Constraints
    With H. Aziz. Games and Economic Behavior, 135:168-187, 2022
    [pdf]
    2022
    Funding Public Projects: A Case for the Nash Product Rule
    With F. Brandt, M. Greger, D. Peters, C. Stricker, and W. Suksompong. Journal of Mathematical Economics, 99, 2022
    [pdf]
    2022
    An Analytical and Experimental Comparison of Maximal Lottery Schemes
    With F. Brandt and C. Stricker. Social Choice and Welfare, 58(1):5--38, 2022
    [pdf]
    2022
    Belief-Averaging and Relative Utilitarianism
    Journal of Economic Theory, 198, 2021
    [pdf]
    2021
    Arrovian Aggregation of Convex Preferences
    With F. Brandt. Econometrica, 88(2):799-844, 2020
    [pdf]
    2020
    An Axiomatic Characterization of the Borda Mean Rule
    With D. Peters. Social Choice and Welfare, 52(4):685–707, 2019
    [pdf]
    2019
    Fractional Hedonic Games
    With H. Aziz, F. Brandt, P. Harrenstein, M. Olsen, and D. Peters. ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation, 7(2), 2019
    [pdf]
    2019
    Justifying Optimal Play via Consistency
    With F. Brandt. Theoretical Economics, 14:1185-1201, 2019
    [pdf]
    2019
    Strategic Abstention based on Preference Extensions: Positive Results and Computer-Generated Impossibilities
    With F. Brandt, C. Geist, and J. Hofbauer. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 66:1031-1056, 2019
    [pdf]
    2019
    Two Problems in Max-size Popular Matchings
    With T. Kavitha. Algorithmica, 81(7):2738–2764, 2019
    [pdf]
    2019
    Welfare Maximization Entices Participation
    With F. Brandt and J. Hofbauer. Games and Economic Behavior, 14:308–314, 2019
    [pdf]
    2019
    On the Tradeoff between Efficiency and Strategyproofness
    With H. Aziz, F. Brandt, and M. Brill. Games and Economic Behavior, 110:1–18, 2018
    [pdf]
    2018
    Proving the Incompatibility of Efficiency and Strategyproofness via SMT Solving
    With F. Brandt, M. Eberl, and C. Geist. Journal of the ACM, 65(2), 2018
    [pdf]
    2018
    The Distribution of Optimal Strategies in Symmetric Zero-sum Games
    Games and Economic Behavior, 104:674–680, 2017
    [pdf]
    2017
    Consistent Probabilistic Social Choice
    With F. Brandt and H. Seedig. Econometrica, 84(5):1839–1880, 2016
    [pdf]
    2016
    The Impossibility of Extending Random Dictatorship to Weak Preferences
    With F. Brandt and W. Suksompong. Economics Letters, 141:44–47, 2016
    [pdf]
    2016
    Universal Pareto Dominance and Welfare for Plausible Utility Functions
    With H. Aziz and F. Brandt. Journal of Mathematical Economics, 60:123–133, 2015
    [pdf]
    2015

    Conference Articles

    Distribution Rules Under Dichotomous Preferences: Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad
    With F. Brandt and D. Peters and C. Stricker. In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (ACM-EC), pages 158–179. ACM Press, 2021
    [pdf]
    2021
    Efficient, Fair, and Incentive-Compatible Healthcare Rationing
    With H. Aziz. In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (ACM-EC), pages 103–104. ACM Press, 2021
    [pdf]
    2021
    An Analytical and Experimental Comparison of Maximal Lottery Schemes
    With F. Brandt and C. Stricker. In Proceedings of the 27th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), pages 114–120. IJCAI, 2018
    [pdf]
    2018
    Popular Matchings with Multiple Partners
    With T. Kavitha. In Proceedings of the 37th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS), Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), pages 19:1–19:15. LZI, 2018
    [pdf]
    2018
    Random Assignment with Optional Participation
    With F. Brandt and J. Hofbauer. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), pages 326–334. IFAAMAS, 2017
    [pdf]
    2017
    Proving the Incompatibility of Efficiency and Strategyproofness via SMT Solving
    With F. Brandt and C. Geist. In Proceedings of the 25th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), pages 116–122. AAAI Press, 2016
    [pdf]
    2016
    Fractional Hedonic Games: Individual and Group Stability
    With F. Brandt and M. Strobel. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), pages 1219–1227. IFAAMAS, 2015
    [pdf]
    2015
    Incentives for Participation and Abstention in Probabilistic Social Choice
    With F. Brandt and J. Hofbauer. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), pages 1411–1419. IFAAMAS, 2015
    [pdf]
    2015
    Strategic Abstention based on Preference Extensions: Positive Results and Computer-Generated Impossibilities
    With F. Brandt, C. Geist, and J, Hofbauer. In Proceedings of the 24th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), pages 18–24. AAAI Press, 2015
    [pdf]
    2015
    On the Incompatibility of Efficiency and Strategyproofness in Randomized Social Choice
    With H. Aziz and F. Brandt. In Proceedings of the 28th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), pages 545–551. AAAI Press, 2014
    [pdf]
    2014
    Universal Pareto Dominance and Welfare for Plausible Utility Functions
    With H. Aziz and F. Brandt. In Proceedings of the 15th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (ACM-EC), pages 331–332. ACM Press, 2014
    [pdf]
    2014
    Existence of Stability in Hedonic Coalition Formation Games
    With H. Aziz. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), pages 763–770. IFAAMAS, 2012
    [pdf]
    2012

    Thesis

    Zero-Sum Games in Social Choice and Game Theory
    PhD thesis, Technische Universität München, 2018
    [pdf]
    2018
    Efficiency and Incentives in Randomized Social Choice
    Master's thesis, Technische Universität München, 2013
    [pdf]
    2013

    Teaching

    Introduction to Decision Theory
    Lecture notes (May 2025)
    [pdf]
    2025

    Positions

    Argelander Professor (associate professor with tenure)
    University of Bonn, Department of Economics
    Since 2021
    Bonn Junior Fellow
    University of Bonn, Hausdorff Center for Mathematics
    Since 2021
    Research Affiliate
    University of Oxford, Global Priorities Institute
    2021-2025
    Postdoctoral Research Scholar
    Princeton University, Department of Economics (with Wolfgang Pesendorfer)
    2020-2021
    Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar
    Stanford University, Department of Economics (with Fuhito Kojima)
    2019-2020
    Graduate Student
    Technical University of Munich, Department of Mathematics (with Felix Brandt)
    2013-2018

    Education

    Doctoral degree in Mathematics (summa cum laude)
    Technical University of Munich
    2018
    Master's degree in Mathematics
    Technical University of Munich
    2013
    Bachelor's degree in Mathematics
    Technical University of Munich
    2011