This site is no longer maintained. Please see my new home page in the Operations and Information Management department at the Wharton School of Business.
Jacomo Corbo Ph.D., Computer Science
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Harvard University

Advisor: David C. Parkes
Group: Economics & Computer Science
 



On November 3, 2007, at the age of 37, Antoni Calvó-Armengol passed away unexpectedly. He was a friend, a co-author, and a member of my Ph.D. Committee. Our thoughts are with his wife and two young children. His colleagues at the CEPR and UAB have written the following.


About Me

I will be joining the OPIM department at the Wharton School of Business on September 1, 2008 as a postdoctoral research fellow.

I completed my PhD in Computer Science at Harvard University in June 2008. Between January 2006 and June 2008, I worked as Chief Race Strategist for the ING Renault F1 Team Ltd. I also obtained an M.S. degree in Applied Mathematics from Harvard in 2003 and received my undergraduate degree with highest honours from McGill University in 2002.

Research

Areas of Interest:

  • networks, information economics, complex systems
  • decentralized markets, organizational structure
  • competitive strategy, strategy formulation, portfolio investment

Many problems in economics, business, and sociology exhibit complex network structure, as specified by the pattern of interactions between actors in a distributed system such as a co-author network, or a large firm, or even the Internet. The goal of my research is to understand both the impact of incentives on the formation and maintenance of network structures, and the role these structures play in determining and constraining system behavior. To that end, my research centers around the generation of principled models of networked systems and processes, and the development of mechanisms and policies to improve system outcomes. My work in this area has examined the formation of the Internet routing graph, content provisioning in peer-to-peer file-sharing systems, and technological collaboration agreements between firms.

I am also interested in how firms solve strategic problems like project resource allocation and R&D portfolio investment, and the effects of competition and managers' risk aversion on strategic behaviour and its optimality. Previous work has involved the development and application of statistical game-theoretic models fitted to empirical data.

Publications
Journal Publications
  • J. Corbo, A. Calvo-Armengol, D. C. Parkes.A Study of the Nash Equilibrium in contribution games for peer-to-peer networks In ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review (40) 3, July 2006, pp.61-66. publisher's site
Conference Proceedings
  • J. Corbo, A. Calvo-Armengol, D. C. Parkes.The Importance of Network Topology in Local Contribution Games, In X. Deng and F. Chung Graham, editors, Proceedings of the International Workshop on Internet and Network Economics (WINE), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). Springer-Verlag, December 2007. pdf

  • J. Corbo, S. Jain, M. Mitzenmacher, D. C. Parkes. An Economically Principled Generative Model of AS Graph Connectivity, In Proceedings of the International Joint Workshop on The Economics of Networked Systems and Incentive-Based Computing, June 2007. pdf

  • J. Corbo, D. C. Parkes. The Price of Selfish Behavior in Bilateral Network Formation, In Proceedings of the 24th ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, pp. 99-107, July 2005. pdf

  • I. Romanovski, J. Corbo, P. Caines. MAP View: An Analysis Tool for Multi-Agent Product Synthesized Hierarchical Supervisory Control of Supply Chains, In Proceedings of the American Control Conference (ACC), Denver, Colorado, USA, 2003.

Book Chapters
  • J. Corbo, T. Petermann. Selfish Routing and Peering in the Internet, In Proceedings of the Santa Fe Institute School of Complexity Series, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, August 2004. publisher's site, working paper version
Working Papers
  • J. Corbo, S. Jain, M. Mitzenmacher, D. C. Parkes. An Economically-Principled Model of the Internet Topology.

  • J. Corbo, A. Calvo-Armengol, D. C. Parkes. Network Effects in Local Contribution Economies: Identification and Regulation. pdf

  • J. Corbo, A. Calvo-Armengol, D. C. Parkes. Investment Decisions in the Creation of Synergies: Lessons from Socio-Economic Networks.
Invited Talks
  • A Strategic Analysis of Strictly Competitive Games, Applied Mathematics Seminar Series, Oxford University, August 2007.

  • A Study of the Nash Equilibrium in contribution games for peer-to-peer network, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, November 2006.

  • The Price of Selfish Behaviour in Bilateral Network Formation, Control, Networks, Games Seminar Series, McGill University, May 2005.

  • Selfish Routing and Peering in the Internet, CSAIL, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, August 2004.