PhD Dissertation

This repository contains code to compile my PhD dissertation, as well as the three papers that it consists of. The main outputs are the following:

• dissertation.pdf: The full dissertation, the main topic of which is the bargaining between a few central and many fringe players.
• theory.pdf: A paper with an abstract, theoretical treatment of the problem.
• application.pdf: An IO paper about a hybrid platform, which engages in bargaining with the fringe entrants.
• experiment.pdf: A lab experiment that examines the outcomes of bargaining and coalition formation in a setting with one indispensable and two smaller players.
• defense.html: The slides for the defense, which provide a high-level overview of the dissertation.

Tip

The code for the papers and the analysis were tracked in different repositories during the majority of their development. You can find the original repositories with the full histories at the following links:

• stanmart/ValueOfIntermediation
• stanmart/unstructured-bargaining-analysis

How to compile

The project is set up so that pixi installs required dependencies into a local virtual environment. The exception is latex, which has to be install manually, and latexmk must be on the search path (required texlive packages are listed in tl_packages.txt).

Other than these, simply install pixi, and then you can use the following commands to compile the outputs:

• pixi run dissertation to compile the dissertation
• pixi run papers to compile three papers
• pixi run presentations to compile the slide decks
• pixi run prepare-to-publish to compile everything and place it in the dist folder

Other pixi tasks

The following commands are available to check the code:

• pixi run format to format the Python code using ruff
• pixi run lint to lint the Python code using ruff
• pixi run typecheck to typecheck the Python code using pyright
• pixi run spell to check the spelling using codespell
• pixi run check to run all the checks

The following commands are available to create graphs of snakemake's execution plan:

• pixi run dag to create a directed acyclic graph of the snakemake workflow
• pixi run filegraph to create a file graph of the snakemake workflow
• pixi run rulegraph to create a rule graph of the snakemake workflow

The following commands are used for the CI publish job:

• pixi run update-latex-deps to collect the texlive packages needed for the project and write them to tl_packages.txt
• pixi run prepare-to-publish to collect every output file and place them into the gh-pages folder

Continuous integration

The project uses Github Actions to automatically compile the outputs and upload them to Github pages. First, the following checks must pass:

• ruff for Python linting and formatting
• pyright for Python type checking
• codespell for spell checking

If they do, the publish job is triggered, which compiles the outputs and uploads them to the gh-pages branch. The results can be found at stanmart.github.io/phd-thesis/{output}.