Professor

Room number: W411
Tel: +44 20 7882 8854
Fax: +44 20 8983 3580
Email: n.vriend@qmul.ac.uk
Website: http://webspace.qmul.ac.uk/nvriend
Office hours: Tuesday 12:00-13:00, Friday 14:00-15:00.

Research keywords: Microeconomic and Game Theory, Economic Dynamics

Nick's fields of interest are microeconomic theory, game theory, industrial organization, evolutionary economics, and complex adaptive systems. His research focuses on the theory of markets and economic behaviour, and he is particularly interested in the dynamics of interactive processes involving bounded rational, learning agents. In relation to this, in his work he follows theoretical as well as experimental and computational tracks. He has investigated the meaning of the concept of rationality in economics, and analysed the link between, on the one hand, ideas of economies as complex adaptive systems (e.g. in recent Agent-based Computational Economics work), and on the other hand, much earlier views on self-organization in economics as advanced by Adam Smith or Hayek. He has worked on models of price dispersion and consumer loyalty and of the phenomenon of information-contagion, and he has investigated the relevance and implications of a range of learning theories both in theory and in experimental setups (including various oligopolistic markets, a location game, and ultimatum games). Recent work also includes the significance of focal points and of signalling in coordination games, and the measuring of the competitiveness of football leagues.

Selected publications

• Vriend N.J. (2001), "Evolving Market Structure: An ACE Model of Price Dispersion and Loyalty", Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control (with A.P. Kirman)
• Vriend N.J. (2002), "The East End, the West End, and King’s Cross: On Clustering in the Four-Player Hotelling Game", Economic Inquiry (with S. Huck, W. Müller)
• Vriend N.J. (2002), "Was Hayek an Ace?", Southern Economic Journal
• Vriend N.J. (2003), "Imitation of Successful Behavior in Cournot Markets", Economic Journal (with A.Bosch-Domènech)
• Vriend N.J. (2003), ""From Exchange It Comes to Tears". A Dutch Folk Theorem Reconsidered", Theory and Decision
• Vriend, N.J. (2006), "ACE Models of Endogenous Interactions",  In L. Tesfatsion & K.J. Judd (ed.), Handbook of Computational Economics II: Agent-Based Computational Economics
• Vriend, N.J. (2006), "On the Behavior of Proposers in Ultimatum Games",  Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (with T. Brenner)
• Vriend, N.J. (2007), "Schelling's Spatial Proximity Model of Segregation Revisited", Journal of Public Economics (with R. Pancs)
• Vriend, N.J. (2007), "Segregation in Networks",  Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (with G. Fagiolo & M. Valente)
• Vriend, N.J. (2009), "On Smiles, Winks, and Handshakes as Coordination Devices", Economic Journal (with P. Manzin & A. Sadrieh)