Agostino Capponi
Columbia University, NY·Engineering
When a shortage of one part ripples through an economy, prices can spike far from where the problem began. A global shortage of computer chips, for example, can drive up U.S.
- Fields
Engineering
Mathematics & Statistics
Social Science
- Topics
supply chain networks
supply chain resilience
game theory
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Develop a dynamic decision-making framework, using dynamic games and network theory, that quantifies trade-offs between routine efficiency and resilience to supply and demand shocks in supply chain networks.
- Empirically analyze supply chain fragility and assess how diversification strategies reduce risks from vulnerabilities, such as shortages that trigger price spikes.
- Design game-theoretic algorithms that find optimal investment in production capacity and competitive risk-sharing agreements between final-goods producers and intermediate-goods suppliers.
- Determine when market-based supply networks are inherently fragile and whether public institutions using data-driven control policies can outperform decentralized market outcomes.
More about the research
used-car prices. A sudden demand surge for hand sanitizer during the pandemic caused widespread shortages. Supply chains are hard to analyze because firms depend on one another. They also adjust their decisions together and strategically when shocks hit, whether to one firm or to the whole system. This project builds a systematic framework to analyze how efficient and how resilient these networks are.
Why it matters
Understanding why supply networks become fragile could help firms and policymakers prepare for shortages like the chip and hand sanitizer crises. Possible tools include better capacity investment, risk-sharing contracts and data-driven public policies. Consumers could benefit from fewer price spikes and shortages during disruptions.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Siddharth Chandra
Michigan State University, MI·Social Science
Infer the hidden structure and flow of cocaine supply networks by applying network analysis to cocaine price data that vary across locations and over time.
Robert Johnson
University of Notre Dame, IN·Social Science
Model how occasionally binding capacity limits in supply chains shift domestic and import price Phillips Curves and fuel inflation, using a multisector open-economy New Keynesian model.
Andrew Sweeting
University of Maryland, MD·Social Science
Measure how shocks to electricity demand, generating costs, coal mining and railroads pass through to coal and transport prices, using reduced-form econometrics on confidential shipment and purchase data, interpreted with Cournot and Spulber models.
The school
Columbia University: 89 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research, 625 research doctorates a year.
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