James Schummer

About

James Schummer is an Associate Professor of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He joined Kellogg in 1997 after earning his PhD in Economics from the University of Rochester. His expertise lies in game theory, axiomatic resource allocation, and mechanism design, focusing on how organizations can design rules and systems that lead to better outcomes when individuals have their own incentives and private information. His research concentrates on allocating scarce resources effectively and strategically robust, exploring questions such as auction design for asset valuation, efficient reallocation of airport landing slots, pricing rules in digital platform matching markets, and structuring waiting lists or classification systems to balance fairness, efficiency, and incentives. More recently, he has studied how information should be allocated when privacy constraints are relevant. Professor Schummer has taught across various Kellogg programs, including the Full-Time MBA, Evening & Weekend MBA, Executive MBA, and PhD programs, regularly teaching Business Analytics and Managerial Economics, and has served as his department's Director of Graduate Studies for nearly two decades.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Microeconomics
• Economics
• Computer Security
• Business
• Statistics
• Mathematical economics
• Actuarial science
• Financial economics
• Finance

Selected publications

• Algorithmic Game Theory

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2007-09-24 · 2259 citations

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  In recent years game theory has had a substantial impact on computer science, especially on Internet- and e-commerce-related issues. Algorithmic Game Theory, first published in 2007, develops the central ideas and results of this exciting area in a clear and succinct manner. More than 40 of the top researchers in this field have written chapters that go from the foundations to the state of the art. Basic chapters on algorithmic methods for equilibria, mechanism design and combinatorial auctions…

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• Strategy-proof Location on a Network

  Journal of Economic Theory · 2002-06-01 · 186 citations

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• On ascending Vickrey auctions for heterogeneous objects

  Journal of Economic Theory · 2005-11-24 · 170 citations

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• Linear Programming and Vickrey Auctions

  ˜The œIMA volumes in mathematics and its applications · 2002-01-01 · 135 citations

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• An Ascending Vickrey Auction for Selling Bases of a Matroid

  Operations Research · 2011-04-01 · 69 citations

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  Consider selling bundles of indivisible goods to buyers with concave utilities that are additively separable in money and goods. We propose an ascending auction for the case when the seller is constrained to sell bundles whose elements form a basis of a matroid. It extends easily to polymatroids. Applications include scheduling, allocation of homogeneous goods, and spatially distributed markets, among others. Our ascending auction induces buyers to bid truthfully and returns the economically eff…

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Frequent coauthors

• Rakesh Vohra

  28 shared

• Sushil Bikhchandani

  14 shared

• Sven de Vries

  12 shared

• Péter Eső

  6 shared

• Noam Nisan

  Hebrew University of Jerusalem

  4 shared

• William Thomson

  University of Rochester

  3 shared

• Éva Tardos

  2 shared

• Rodrigo A. Velez

  2 shared

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