I am an assistant professor (Universitätsassistent mit Doktorat) at the Graz Schumpeter Centre of the University of Graz who specializes in agent-based modelling and quantitative methods. I am particularly interested in studying "big questions" without claiming to provide comprehensive, "final" answers.

My recent research has been focused on political economy, economic epidemiology and economic inequality. After completing my PhD thesis on "innovation, inequality and polarization", I worked on a project on "Agent-based Economic Epidemiology", which is funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF with ca. 400,000€ and which is based on my paper COVID-Town, for which I also have received the EAEPE Herbert Simon Prize 2021.

I am passionate about interdisciplinary research, which is also evidenced by the fact that I did not only act as a peer reviewer for top field journals in economics such as the Journal of Ecnonomic Growth and the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, but also for journals in medicine, biology, political science, computational social science, sociology and business.

You can find my (working) papers here. You can find my CV here. I am active on Twitter/X as @Patrick_M_Econ and on BlueSky as @pmellacher@bsky.social.