I am a professor of economics
and mathematics at Caltech. I am interested in probability,
dynamics and group theory, and in their applications
to topics in microeconomic theory,
including information, risk
and uncertainty, and social choice. I am a member of the
Caltech CSIS
interdisciplinary research group.
I got my B.Sc. in computer science and physics
from Tel Aviv University, where I participated in the
search for extrasolar planets with the
brilliant Tsevi
Mazeh.
In 2013 I received my Ph.D. in mathematics from the Weizmann
Institute, advised
by Elchanan
Mossel. From 2013 until 2015 I was a Schramm postdoctoral
fellow at the MIT math department / Microsoft
Research, where I previously was an intern of
Adam Kalai. I have been at Caltech since 2015,
and a full professor since 2019.
Write to my gmail (omertamuz), or visit me in
Baxter Hall, room
213.
Support
I am (or have been) supported by a Sloan research fellowship in mathematics,
an NSF CAREER award (
DMS-1944153), a
BSF award (2018397), and a Simons foundation award (419427).
I am an organizer of the Caltech Econ
Theory in the Time of Cholera online seminar, which recurs weekly on Wednesdays at noon
pacific time. The seminar is live streamed
on twitch.tv/caltechecontheory,
where viewer questions are forwarded
to the speaker. See updates on twitter.com/CaltechEconThry.
Past workshops that we have hosted at Caltech
include WISE 2016,
WISE 2018
and NEGT 2018.
Working papers
“
Information Cascades and Social Learning” with
Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer and Ivo Welch
“
Monotone additive statistics” with
Xiaosheng Mu, Luciano Pomatto and Philipp Strack
“
Background risk and small-stakes risk aversion” with
Xiaosheng Mu, Luciano Pomatto and Philipp Strack
“
Monotone homomorphisms on convolution semigroups” with Tobias Fritz and
Xiaosheng Mu
“
The cost of information”
with Luciano Pomatto and Philipp Strack,
R&R at
AER
“
On the spectrum of asymptotic entropies of random walks”
with Tianyi Zheng
“
Weak equivalence of stationary actions and the
entropy realization problem” with Peter Burton and Martino
Lupini
Forthcoming
“
Additive conjugacy and the Bohr compactification of
orthogonal representations” with Zachary Chase and Wade
Hann-Caruthers,
Mathematische Annalen
“
Characteristic measures of symbolic
dynamical systems” with Joshua
Frisch,
Ergodic Theory and Dynamical Systems 
“
Feasible joint posterior
beliefs” with Itai Arieli, Yakov Babichenko and Fedor
Sandomirskiy,
Journal of
Political Economy, recipient
of the
EC20
best paper award 
2021
“
Equitable voting rules”
with Laurent Bartholdi, Wade Hann-Caruthers, Maya Josyula and
Leeat Yariv,
Econometrica, presented at EC19
“
From Blackwell Dominance in Large Samples to Rényi Divergences and Back Again” with
Xiaosheng Mu, Luciano Pomatto and Philipp Strack,
Econometrica
“
Rational groupthink”
with Elchanan Mossel, Matan Harel and Philipp Strack,
Quarterly
Journal of Economics
2020
“
Repeated coordination with private
learning” with Pathikrit Basu, Kalyan Chatterjee and
Tetsuya Hoshino
Journal of Economic Theory
“
Stochastic dominance under independent noise”
with Luciano Pomatto and Philipp Strack,
Journal of
Political Economy
“
Unfriendly colorings of graphs with finite average degree”
with Clinton T. Conley,
Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society
“
Social learning equilibria” with Elchanan
Mossel, Manuel Mueller-Frank and Allan Sly,
Econometrica, presented at EC18
“
Invariant random subgroups of semidirect
products” with Ian Biringer and Lewis Bowen,
Ergodic Theory and Dynamical Systems
2019
“
Strong amenability and the infinite
conjugacy class property” with Joshua Frisch and Pooya Vahidi Ferdowsi,
Inventiones Mathematicae
“
Normal amenable subgroups of the automorphism
group of the full shift”
with Joshua Frisch and Tomer Schlank,
Ergodic Theory and Dynamical Systems
“
Thompson's group F is not strongly
amenable” with Yair Hartman, Kate Juscheno and Pooya Vahidi Ferdowsi,
Ergodic Theory and Dynamical Systems
“
Choquet-Deny groups and the infinite
conjugacy class property” with Joshua Frisch, Yair Hartman,
and Pooya Vahidi Ferdowsi,
Annals of Mathematics
2018
“
A deterministic protocol for sequential
asymptotic learning” with Yu Cheng and Wade Hann-Caruthers,
IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT)
“
The speed of sequential asymptotic learning”
with Wade Hann-Caruthers and Vadim V. Martynov,
Journal of Economic Theory
“
Non-exploitable protocols for repeated cake
cutting” with Shai Vardi and Juba Ziani,
AAAI
Conference on Artificial Intelligence
“
Quasi-regular sequences and optimal schedules
for security games” with David Kempe and Leonard J. Schulman,
Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA)
2017
“
Opinion exchange dynamics”
with Elchanan Mossel,
Probability Surveys
“
Symbolic dynamics on amenable
groups: the entropy of generic shifts”
with Joshua Frisch,
Ergodic Theory and Dynamical Systems
“
Generic stationary measures and
actions” with Lewis Bowen and Yair Hartman,
Transactions of
the American Mathematical Society
“
Unimodularity of invariant random
subgroups” with Ian Biringer,
Transactions of
the American Mathematical Society
2016
“
Stabilizer rigidity in irreducible group
actions” with Yair Hartman,
Israel Journal of Mathematics
“
Efficient bayesian learning in social networks with Gaussian
estimators” with Elchanan Mossel and Noah Olsman,
The
Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and
Computing
“
Convergence, unanimity and disagreement in majority
dynamics on unimodular graphs and random graphs” with Itai
Benjamini, Siu-On Chan, Ryan O'Donnell and Li-Yang
Tan,
Stochastic Processes and their Applications
“
Graphical potential games”
with Yakov Babichenko,
Journal of Economic Theory
“
Transitive graphs uniquely determined by their
local structure” with Joshua Frisch,
Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society
“
Property (T) and the Furstenberg entropy of
nonsingular actions” with Lewis Bowen and Yair Hartman,
Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society
2015
“
Strategic learning and the topology of
social networks” with Elchanan Mossel and Allan Sly,
Econometrica
“
Furstenberg entropy realizations for
virtually free groups and lamplighter groups” with Yair Hartman,
Journal d'Analyse Mathématique
“
OMG UR funny! Computer-aided humor with an application to chat”
Miaomiao Wen, Nancy Baym, Omer Tamuz, Jaime Teevan, Susan Dumais, Adam Kalai,
The International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC)
2014
“
Majority dynamics and the retention of
information” with Ran Tessler,
Israel Journal of Mathematics
“
Scenery reconstruction on finite abelian groups”
with Hilary Finucane and Yariv Yaari,
Stochastic Processes
and their Applications
“
An Abramov formula for stationary spaces of discrete
groups” with Yair Hartman and Yuri Lima,
Ergodic Theory and Dynamical Systems
“
Asymptotic learning on bayesian social
networks” with Elchanan Mossel and Allan Sly,
Probability Theory and Related Fields
“
Majority dynamics and aggregation of information in
social networks” with Elchanan Mossel and Joe Neeman,
Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems
2013
“
A machine learning framework for programming by example” Aditya Menon, Omer Tamuz, Sumit Gulwani, Butler Lampson, Adam Kalai,
The International
Conference on Machine Learning (ICML)
“
Making consensus tractable” with Elchanan Mossel,
ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation
“
A lower bound on seller revenue in single buyer monopoly auctions”,
Operations Research Letters
“
Testing booleanity and the uncertainty
principle” with Tom Gur,
Chicago Journal of Theoretical Computer Science
“
Tractable bayesian social learning on
trees” with Yashodhan Kanoria,
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication and
IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT)
2012
“
Lower bounds on revenue of
approximately optimal auctions” with Balasubramanian
Sivan and Vasilis Syrgkanis,
The Workshop on Internet and Network Economics (WINE)
“
Complete characterization of functions satisfying the conditions of
Arrow's theorem” with Elchanan Mossel,
Social Choice and
Welfare
2011
“
Social learning in a changing
world” with Rafael Frongillo and Grant Schoenebeck,
The Workshop on Internet
and Network Economics (WINE)
“
Adaptively learning the crowd kernel” Omer Tamuz,
Ce Liu, Serge Belongie, Ohad Shamir, Adam Kalai,
The
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML)
2010
“
Truthful fair division” with Elchanan Mossel,
The International Symposium on Algorithmic Game Theory (SAGT)
“
Iterative maximum likelihood on
networks” with Elchanan Mossel,
Advances in Applied Mathematics, and
The
Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and
Computing
“
PROMO: A method for identifying modules in protein
interaction networks” with Yaron Singer and Roded Sharan, 2006,
European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB)
Past work in Astronomy
“The CORALIE survey for southern extra-solar planets. XVI. Discovery of a planetary system around HD 147018 and of two long period and massive planets orbiting HD 171238 and HD 204313” Damien Ségransan, Stephane Udry, Michel Mayor et al, 2010, Astronomy & Astrophysics
“The
CORALIE survey for southern extra-solar planets. XV. Discovery of
two eccentric planets orbiting HD 4113 and HD 156846” Omer
Tamuz, Damien Ségransan, Stephane Udry et al, 2008, Astronomy & Astrophysics
“A
transiting planet among 23 new near-threshold candidates from
the OGLE survey - OGLE-TR-182” Frédéric Pont, Omer Tamuz,
Andrzej Udalski et al, 2008, Astronomy &
Astrophysics
“OGLE-TR-211 - a new transiting inflated hot Jupiter from the OGLE survey and ESO LP666 spectroscopic follow-up program” Andrzej Udalski, Frédéric Pont, Dominique Naef et al, 2008, Astronomy & Astrophysics
“The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets. IX. mu Ara, a system with four planets” Francesco Pepe, Alexandre Correia, Michel Mayor et al, 2007, Astronomy & Astrophysics
“Photometric follow-up of the transiting planet WASP-1b” Avi Shporer, Omer Tamuz, Shay Zucker, Tsevi Mazeh, 2007, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
“Automated analysis of eclipsing binary lightcurves. I. EBAS --- a new Eclipsing Binary Automated Solver with EBOP” Omer Tamuz, Tsevi Mazeh, Pierre North, 2006, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
“Automated analysis of eclipsing binary light curves. II. Statistical analysis of OGLE LMC eclipsing binaries” Tsevi Mazeh, Omer Tamuz, Pierre North, 2006, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
“Correcting systematic effects in a large set of photometric lightcurves” Omer Tamuz, Tsevi Mazeh, Shay Zucker, 2005, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
