Pierpaolo Battigalli

Pierpaolo Battigalli (born June 18, 1961) is an Italian economist. He is a professor at Bocconi University, in Milan, and is associated with the IGIER. He does research in microeconomic theory, in particular the epistemic foundations of game theory and psychological games.

Battigalli is a fellow of the Econometric Society and the Game Theory Society. Since 2021 he is one of the editors of the Journal of Economic Theory.

Biography

Life and education

Battigalli was born on June 18, 1961, in Milan. He went to highschool at the , where he was involved in student politics and first became interested in social sciences. He received his BA in economics at Bocconi University under the supervision of Aldo Montesano in 1987. His undergraduate thesis was in game theory, where he independently developed solution concepts related to David Pearce's extensive-form rationazalibility, and Fudenberg and Levine's self-confirming equilibrium.

Battigalli went on to do his master's in econometrics and mathematical economics at the London School of Economics in 1989. In 1990 he returned to Italy for his PhD, which he finished in 1992 at a joint economics program at Bocconi, University of Milan, and the Catholic University of Milan.

Research

Epistemic game theory

Battigalli has done foundational research on epistemic game theory, a sub-field of game theory which studies how players' hierarchies of beliefs affect strategic behavior. Together with Marciano Siniscalchi he has developed the game-theoretic notion of strong belief, which they used as an epistemic foundation for forward-induction reasoning in games. Another contribution with Siniscalchi is the construction of the "universal type space" of hiearchies of conditional probability systems, an extensive-form generalization of Mertens and Zamir's hierarchies of beliefs.

Psychological game theory

Battigalli has also contributed substantially to the sub-field of psychological games. Based on his work on dynamic interactive epistemology from epistemic game theory, with applications such as modelling guilt and frustration.