Tilman Drerup

Economics & Machine Learning

LinkedIn • GitHub • Google Scholar

Hi there!

Economics and Machine Learning

I am a Senior Director of Machine Learning Engineering at Instacart in San Francisco, California. Working at the intersection of economics and machine learning, my team and I tackle a diverse set of topics, including ads, pricing, and growth.

You can contact me through LinkedIn.

Research

I have worked as a postdoctoral researcher in economics at Stanford University under the supervision of Prof. Susan Athey and as a postdoctoral researcher at the Bonn Institute for Applied Microeconomics.

My research focuses on applied microeconometrics, machine learning, and behavioral finance, with particular emphasis on user heterogeneity, dimension reduction in choice models, and the estimation of price elasticities. I am also interested in the role of beliefs and non-standard choice behavior in financial decision making.

Selected Papers

Designing Promises with Reference-Dependent Customers: The Case of Online Grocery Delivery Time
2022 • with George Gui (Columbia) • SSRN
Skewness Expectations and Portfolio Choice
2023 • with Matthias Wibral (Maastricht) and Christian Zimpelmann (Bonn) • Journal of Experimental Economics
Eliciting Subjective Expectations for Bivariate Outcomes
2019 • Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance
The Precision of Subjective Data and the Explanatory Power of Economic Models
2017 • with Benjamin Enke (Harvard) and Hans-Martin von Gaudecker (Bonn) • Journal of Econometrics
Diurnal Rhythms in Investor Sentiment
2015 • Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance
Recommendation Revisions and Differences in the Interpretation of Earnings
2014 • SSRN
Long-Term Effects of Hedge Fund Activism in Germany
2014 • SSRN

Selected Patents

Counterfactual Policy Evaluation of Model Performance
2025 • Granted • Link
Trustless Physical Cryptocurrency
2021 • Granted • Link

Projects

Selected Software Projects

Elliptic Curve Solidity
GitHub
A JavaScript/Solidity implementation of elliptic curve math, parameterized for ECDSA signature verification for curve secp256r1/prime256v1/p256 on Ethereum.
Binary Choice Double Index
GitHub
A Python implementation of the semiparametric double-index estimator of Klein and Vella (2009).
KONG.CASH Mobile App
App Store
Mobile app for verifying physical crypto notes using smart contracts, elliptic curve math, and NFC.

Blog

Once in a while, I blog about some of my team's work the intersection of economics and machine learning.

Recent Posts

June 2024
Toban Wiebe, Fang Guo, Rustin Partow, and I have written a blog post on some recent work we have done to optimally allocate marketing spend via adaptive experimentation.
April 2024
Levi Boxell, Robert Fletcher, and I have written a blog post on using regression discontinuities to power decision-making. Check it out!
November 2023
Levi Boxell, Robert Fletcher, and I have written a blog post to describe the kind of work that Instacart's Economics team is working on and the tools and skills we deploy.

CV

Experience

Instacart
Since 2024 • Senior Director of Machine Learning Engineering
2022-2024 • Director of Machine Learning Engineering
2020-2022 • Senior Manager of Machine Learning Engineering
2020-2020 • Staff Economist / Machine Learning Engineer
WeWork
2019-2020 • Senior Economist
Airtime Network
2018-2019 • Co-Founder
Stanford University
2016-2017 • Postdoctoral Researcher in Economics under the supervision of Prof. Susan Athey
Bonn University
2013-2016 • (Postdoctoral) Researcher in Economics
Gameconomy GmbH
2002-2006 • Founder / CEO

Education

University of Bonn
2015 • Ph.D. in Economics
2009 • Diploma in Economics