Emir Kamenica

About

Emir Kamenica is the Richard O. Ryan Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. His research encompasses an eclectic set of topics in microeconomics, with a particular focus on theoretical work in information design. Professor Kamenica has been recognized for his contributions to the field, notably receiving the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 2013. He also holds an honorary doctorate from Shepherd University. From 2016 to 2024, he served as an Editor of the Journal of Political Economy. Born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Professor Kamenica earned both his PhD in Economics in 2006 and his bachelor's degree in applied mathematics in 2001 from Harvard University. He joined the faculty at Chicago Booth in 2006, where he continues his academic and research endeavors.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Information Retrieval
• Computer Science
• Social psychology
• Demography
• Psychology
• Economics
• Mathematics
• Law

Selected publications

• Competition in Persuasion

  World Scientific series in economic theory · 2025-05-01 · 76 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  We study symmetric information games where a number of senders choose what information to communicate. We show that the impact of competition on information revelation is ambiguous in general. We identify a condition on the information environment (i.e., the set of signals available to each sender) that is necessary and sufficient for equilibrium outcomes to be no less informative than the collusive outcome, regardless of preferences. The same condition also provides an easy way to characterize…

  PublisherDOI

• Coming Apart? Cultural Distances in the United States over Time

  American Economic Journal Applied Economics · 2023 · 50 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  We analyze trends in cultural distances between groups in the United States defined by income, education, gender, race, and political ideology. We measure cultural distance as the ability to infer an individual's group based on media diet, consumer behavior, time use, social attitudes, or newborn's name. Gender difference in time-use decreased between 1965 and 1995 and has remained constant since. Differences in social attitudes by political ideology, and somewhat by income, have increased over…

  PublisherDOI

• Information Hierarchies

  Econometrica · 2022 · 14 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  If experiment A is Blackwell more informative than experiment B , it is always possible that A and B are induced by signals A′ and B′ such that A′ is a refinement of B′, that is, A′ entails observing B′ plus some additional information. We first show that this result does not extend beyond pairs of experiments: There exist collections of experiments that cannot be induced by a collection of signals so that whenever two experiments are Blackwell ordered, the associated signals are refinement orde…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Bayesian persuasion and information design: perspectives and open issues

  Economic Theory · 2021-08-21 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access1st author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Comparisons of Signals

  American Economic Review · 2024-08-29 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author

  A signal is a description of an information source that specifies both its correlation with the state and its correlation with other signals. Extending Blackwell (1953), we characterize when one signal is more valuable than another regardless of preferences and regardless of access to other signals. This comparison is equivalent to reveal-or-refine: every realization of the more valuable signal reveals the state or refines the realization of the less valuable signal. We also study other comparis…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Marianne Bertrand

  University of Chicago

  17 shared

• Raymond Fisman

  17 shared

• Sheena S. Iyengar

  12 shared

• Jessica Pan

  11 shared

• Matthew Gentzkow

  11 shared

• Itamar Simonson

  Universitat Ramon Llull

  8 shared

• Joseph Reiff

  University of Maryland, College Park

  6 shared

• Nikolaj Harmon

  6 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  Harvard University

  2006

• B.S., applied mathematics

  Harvard University

  2001

Awards & honors

• 2013 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship

Similar researchers at University of Chicago

• Luis Garicanoh-49
• Robert H. Gertnerh-28