Gonzalo Ballestero

Gonzalo Ballestero

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Penn State University.

I am an applied microeconomist working at the intersection of market design and industrial organization.

Here you can find my curriculum vitae.

You can contact me at gballestero@psu.edu.

Working Papers

Groupthinking among AI Agents (with Hadi Hosseini, Samarth Khanna, Ran I. Shorrer)

Draft coming soon.

Publications

Algorithmic Collusion under Sequential Pricing and Stochastic Costs, March 2025, [SSRN]
Conditionally Accepted at International Journal of Industrial Organization

The use of pricing algorithms raises concerns about algorithmic collusion. This paper considers a sequential pricing model where marginal cost fluctuates over time. I find that Q-learning algorithms autonomously collude even under cost uncertainty. Collusion is sustained by strategies that involve reward-punishment schemes. It suggests that cost uncertainty is not an obstacle to autonomous algorithmic collusion.

Work in Progress

Learning to Play the Match Again

Publications (prior to the PhD)

Traducción Contextualizada de un Marco de Responsabilidad: Dinámica Nanotecnológica en Argentina (with Pablo Herrera and Javier García Fronti)
Nanotecnología y Sociedad en Argentina. Vol. I, pp. 183-200, 2021

Análisis de la Cualificación de las Restricciones en el Teorema de Kuhn–Tucker (with Pablo Herrera)
Revista de Investigación en Modelos Matemáticos Aplicados a la Gestión y la Economía, 34 (2019): 26–39

Policy Briefs

Irregularidades en el Examen de Ingreso al Sistema Nacional de Residencias Médicas, July 2025

El Sistema Nacional de Residencias Médicas: Hacia un Acceso Más Equitativo, June 2025