Date/Time
Date(s) - 20/03/2026
11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Samuel Kapon, Assistant Professor University of California Berkeley will present to our graduate students and faculty in LRW 5001!

Please note the different location.

Samuel Kapon is an assistant professor in the BPP group at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, working on microeconomic theory and political economy.

He will be presenting,”The Dynamics of Random Purges”.

Abstract

We study a novel dynamic infinite horizon game between a principal and a group of agents she wants to eliminate. Each period, the principal targets a subset of agents for elimination. Agents can protest and successful protest stops the principal forever. We contrast two classes of equilibria: in the first, the principal proposes to eliminate agents according to a pre-specified list, while in the second, the principal proposes to eliminate a uniformly random subset of agents each period.  In the first case, the principal engages in at most one round of elimination. In the second case, the principal typically engages in many rounds of elimination, stopping at an endogenously determined cutoff. The principal approaches this cutoff at constrained maximum speed, eliminating as many agents as would be statically optimal each period. We discuss a number of illustrative cases, focusing on elite purges.

Learn more about Sam’s work and connect with him through his professional website.