Mellacher, Patrick, B.A.(Econ.) M.Sc. (Econ.)

I am an economist working at the Graz Schumpeter Centre of the University of Graz, who specializes in computer simulations and agent-based models. My current work focusses on analyzing the interdependence between innovations, economic inequality, and economic and political polarization.

I am especially interested in studying contemporary phenomena, which is why I started to develop an economic-epidemiological agent-based model called COVID-Town following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. In contrast to the SIR approach standard to economic epidemiology, this model allows to explicitly containment policies such as school closures in the presence of agent and industry heterogeneity, taking into account factors that did not receive enough attention in epidemiological models so far such as care work.

I am also interested in the history of economic thought and do not shy away from using "old" ideas with "new" methods. I translated parts of Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy into German for the first time and work as Editorial Assistant of the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought.