Francesco Vitiello

Lecturer in Economics

I'm a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Surrey. My research interests are game theory, in particular existence of Nash equilibrium and topological structures of normal-form, and games with a large number of players.

Working Papers

Existence of Pure Strategy Nash Equilibrium and Choice of the Topology on the Joint Strategy Space

Topological properties of normal-form games play a fundamental role in showing the existence of a Nash equilibrium. In particular, the literature has focused its attention on two characteristics of games that depend on the topology that the strategy space is equipped with: continuity and compactness. We show that in compact simple games it is always possible to change the topology on the joint strategy space to maintain its compactness while obtaining the continuity of players' payoff functions. Despite this, we show that Nash equilibria may not exist because other topological properties needed for existence may fail to hold. In particular, this is true for games that have discontinuity on the diagonal of the joint strategy space.

An Extension of the Imagined-continuum Model

Large games are appealing in economics because they rule out the possibility that a single agent can change the equilibria of the game by only changing her own action. Because of their complexity, these games were first studied in a static framework and extending them to a dynamic setting has proven to be somehow challenging if strong assumptions on the structure of the game want to be avoided. Kalai and Shmaya (2018) manage to do that considering the imagined-continuum model and this paper aims to extend their model by allowing the set of players to change in each period. A second aim of this paper is to refine their predictability result in theorem 1.

Teaching

Lecturer in Economics
University of Surrey

Teaching Assistant
University of Surrey

Academic Year 2023/2024

Games, Markets and Information (Autumn Semester, UG, 3rd Year)

Academic Year 2022/2023

Principles of Microeconomics (Spring Semester, UG, 1st Year)

Research Methods (Spring Semester, PG, 1st Year)

Academic Year 2021/2022

Principles of Microeconomics (Spring Semester, UG, 1st Year)

Economics of the Firm (Spring Semester, UG, 2nd Year)

Academic Year 2020/2021

Principles of Microeconomics (Spring Semester, UG, 1st Year)

Economics of the Firm (Spring Semester, UG, 2nd Year)

Academic Year 2023/2024

Topics in Microeconomics (Autumn Semester, UG, 3rd Year)