FERNANDO VEGA-REDONDO

                fernando vega-redondo

This is my professional webpage, where you may find information that summarizes my research and teaching activities:

•     selected publications,
•     working papers,
•     courses  taught, with associated material
           

For a detailed Curriculum Vitae, download it here 

To contact me, you can find my "coordinates"  here

   Personal information:

Born in León (Spain)
Married to  Mirèia Carol i Gres
Four children: Manuel, Ferrán, Diego, Olalla

 

  Research:

My research has largely focused on the theory of games and its economic applications, with a special emphasis on issues of bounded rationality, learning, and evolution. Much of my recent work is devoted to understanding the interplay between individual behavior and the evolution of social networks in large and complex environments. Methodologically, I strive to develop a theory that is suitable to study the large-scale data that is becoming widely available in some social environments.

More specifically, my current work primarily focuses on the following three lines of research:

• Production and financial networks: The intricate interaction of the production and financial connections characterizing modern economies can be fruitfully modeled as a complex multilevel network. In this context, I am particularly interested on how real and financial shocks propagate, what is the direct and indirect impact casued by various distortions (e.g. market power), and the features of an economy that make it more or less robust and resilient to shock propagation. The recent availability of highly granular data on the real and the financial sides of some national economies allows for structural testing of the theory and its use as a tool to inform economic policy. 

Collaborators: Kenan Huremovic, Gabriel Jiménez, Enrique Moral-Benito, and Jose-Luis Peydró.

• Peer networks and innovation: Peer networks are a key channel of information, feedback, and motivation among innovators and entrepreneurs. Understanding better how they operate in the modern hyper-connected world is important to promote innovation and economic development. Starting from a large-scale field experiment conducted in Africa (49 countries and 5,000 entrepreneurs), we have developed a theory that is consistent with the evidence and can hopefully guide the design and implementation of incentive-compatible mechanisms that exploit the substantial potential for innovation that is achievable through large-scale peer networks in social environments.

Collaborators: Paolo Pin, Diego Ubfal, Cristiana Benedetti, Charles Brummitt, Gaia Rubera, Dirk Hovy, and Tommaso Fornaciari.

• Social networks, learning, and collective action: People learn from their connections/friends in various social networks and also aim to coordinate behavior with them. This is particularly evident when some sort of collective action arises in contexts (e.g. riots) where information is crucial and certain individual choices (say, protest) are acutely risky if mis-coordinated with those of others. How does collective behavior unfold under these circumstances in very large populations? What are the factors/conditions that make it feasible or, instead, render it essentially impossible? We have developed a theory that can suitably account for the main forces at work, and can be brought to the analysis of large-scale data – in particular, we have relied on it to shed light on the phenomenon of massive social protest that has been labeled the Arab Spring.

Collaborators: Lachlan Deer, Chih-Sheng Hsieh, and Michael König.

For my recent papers on these topics -- as well as on other issues -- refer to  working papers.