Yang Cai

• Theory of Computation
• Economics & Computation
• Optimization
• Learning

• COLT Best Paper Award, 2025
• FOCS Test of Time Award, 2022
• NSF CAREER Award, 2020
• Sloan Research Fellowship, 2019
• William Dawson Scholar, 2015
• Simons-Berkeley Research Fellowship, 2015

What Makes Treatment Effects Identifiable? Characterizations and Estimators Beyond Unconfoundedness

The 38th Annual Conference on Learning Theory (COLT), 2025.

With Alkis Kalavasis, Katerina Mamali, Anay Mehrotra, Manolis Zampetakis.

On Tractable Φ-Equilibria in Non-Concave Games

The 38th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2024.

With Constantinos Daskalakis, Haipeng Luo, Chen-Yu Wei, Weiqiang Zheng.

Finite-Time Last-Iterate Convergence for Learning in Multi-Player Games

The 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS Oral), 2022.

With Argyris Oikonomou, Weiqiang Zheng.

A Duality-Based Unified Approach to Bayesian Mechanism Design

SIAM Journal on Computing, 2021.

With Nikhil R. Devanur, S. Matthew Weinberg.

Approximating Gains from Trade in Two-sided Markets via Simple Mechanisms

Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC), 2017.

With Johannes Brustle, Fa Wu, Mingfei Zhao.

Simple Mechanisms for Subadditive Buyers via Duality

Proceedings of the 49th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), 2017.

With Mingfei Zhao.

Optimum Statistical Estimation with Strategic Data Sources

The 28th Annual Conference on Learning Theory (COLT), 2015.

With Constantinos Daskalakis, Christos Papadimitriou.

Optimal Multi-Dimensional Mechanism Design: Reducing Revenue to Welfare Maximization

Proceedings of the 53rd IEEE Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), 2012.

With Constantinos Daskalakis, S. Matthew Weinberg.