Spatial Price Equilibrium and Food Webs -- Supply Chains in Nature

I continue to be fascinated by networks in nature and have been conducting research at the interfaces of economics, ecology, and operations research.

Specifically, I became intrigued by the underlying economics of predator-prey relationships in complex food webs, which are nature's supply chains.

This research has led to the paper, "Spatial Price Equilibrium and Food Webs: The Economics of Predator-Prey Networks," in which we establish that the governing equilibrium conditions underlying predator-prey interactions with multiple species correspond to the classical spatial price equilibrium conditions dating to the work of the Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, Paul Samuelson!

To be able to establish the equivalence between systems in ecology and in economics, as we have done, suggests an inherent commonality among entirely distinct network systems and demonstrates that interactions in ecology and biology can be interpreted economically with price functions and transportation / transaction cost functions. Another fascinating aspect of ecological networks and food webs is that nodes correspond to different species but the flows are common and correspond to biomass flows. So, such networks are single commodity ones!

Our research included the development of a dynamic model of predator-prey interactions using projected dynamical systems theory, a theory and methodology which we developed, and which is now being used in evolutionary game theory by, among others, Bill Sandholm. I just purchased his book and am enjoying reading it. Economists (and others) are fascinated by evolutionary game theory, which has origins in biology, notably, in the work of Maynard Smith. I am delighted that our work has relevance here, as well.

Our paper is to appear in the Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE Conference on Supernetworks and System Management. This conference takes place in Shanghai next week.

Starting to Pack for China and Preparing Keynote Talks

Now that the academic year has come to a close with celebratory graduations and associated events in the past, I have begun to pack for my trip to China later this week.

I will be giving two keynote talks at conferences, at the 2011 PAKDD conference in Shenzen, and at the 2011 IEEE Conference on Supernetworks and System Management in Shanghai.

At the PAKDD 2011 conference, I will speak on "Supernetworks: Opportunities and challenges for decision-making in the 21st century," and at the IEEE conference, I will speak on "Supernetworks in healthcare and humanitarian operations." Joining me at the latter conference will be a former doctoral student of mine, Professor June Dong of the School of Business at SUNY Oswego, who is helping with the organization of that conference, and a present doctoral student of mine, Min Yu, who will present our paper, Sustainable Fashion Supply Chain Management Under Oligopolistic Competition and Brand Differentiation, to appear in the International Journal of Production Economics, Special Issue on Green Manufacturing and Distribution in the Fashion and Apparel Industries. Our conference presentation can be downloaded here.

In addition to my keynote in Shanghai, I will deliver the paper, "Spatial price equilibrium and food webs: The economics of predator-prey networks," which was co-authored with my husband, Professor Ladimer Nagurney. This paper will appear in the conference proceedings and the presentation I have made available because it should be of interest to not only the ecology community but also to economists and operations researchers.

For those who think that once the teaching is over, faculty just go on vacation, I beg to differ.