Patrick T Harker

As I reflect on my research contributions over the past 40 years, they can be categorized in four different phases of my work. In what follows, I will briefly describe each phase as well as a few of the significant papers in each area.  What unifies all this work is the desire to address practical problems using methodologies from Management Science and Operations Research.  This led in some cases to the development of new methodologies to address these problems that in many cases have stood the test of time in terms of their contributions to the field.

Research Phase Ia: Transportation Science

The Staggers and Motor Carrier Acts of 1980 were major pieces of legislation that deregulated the transportation industry in the United States. Starting with my dissertation work that was funded by the US Department of Energy, a series of articles were written concerning how these pieces of landmark legislation would change our freight transportation system. These articles describe both the theory of and algorithms for very complex network models of competition.  The models were then used by the Department of Energy and other federal agencies to predict freight flows both here in United States and abroad.  Three representative examples of this literature are:

• P.T. Harker and T.L. Friesz, “Prediction of intercity freight flows I: theory,” Transportation Research 20B (1986), 139–153.
• P.T. Harker and T.L. Friesz, “Prediction of intercity freight flows II: mathematical formulations,” Transportation Research 20B (1986), 155–174.
• P.T. Harker, “Alternative models of spatial competition,” Operations Research 34 (1986), 410–425.

Research Phase Ib: Variational Inequality and Complementarity Theory and Algorithms

The models that were developed in Phase Ia required new approaches to solving very complex and large-scale computable equilibrium problems. As a result, I undertook with my colleague Jong-Shi Pang and several of my doctoral students a multi-year effort to develop both the theory and algorithms for this class of problems.  These were formulated as variational inequality or complementarity problems.  This work led to a significant number of advances in the field that are best summarized in an article that I co-authored with Jong-Shi Pang that not only reviewed the advances in the field but also closed a few of the holes in the theory that we discovered during the process of writing this article:

• P.T. Harker and J.S. Pang, “Finite-dimensional variational inequality and nonlinear complementarity problems: a survey of theory, algorithms and applications,” Mathematical Programming 48 (1990), 161–220.

To this day this article is seen as the main reference for the field and continues to be cited 35 years after its publication.

Research Phase II: Optimization Models for Freight Transportation Systems

Soon after joining the Wharton faculty, I was awarded a Presidential Young Investigator grant from the National Science Foundation.  This award not only recognized excellence in one’s early career trajectory but also encouraged university- industry collaboration.  As a result, I received funding from the Burlington Northern Railroad to help develop the optimization models that became part of Advanced Railroad Electronics System, or ARES. This work again led to several doctoral students working on this project as well as leading to patents on the underlying algorithms. Two examples of this work include:

• D. Kraay, P.T. Harker and B. Chen, “Optimal pacing of trains in freight railroads: model formulation and solution,” Operations Research 39 (1991), 82–99.
• D. Jovanovic and P.T. Harker, “Tactical scheduling of rail operations: the SCAN~I decision support system,” Transportation Science 25 (1991), 46–64.

Research Phase III: Service Operations and Financial Services

Having become the Director of the Fishman Davidson Center for the Study of the Service Sector at Wharton, I then pivoted my work to broader issues related to the service economy and specifically, financial services. This work was supported by a major grant from the Sloan Foundation that we received in the Financial Institution Center where I led the productivity study in retail banking.  Once again, a group of graduate students joined me in conducting this research that led to a stream of work related to competition in the service sector, productivity in financial services, and broader concepts of customer efficiency and its management. A few representative articles in this space are:

• P.T. Harker and S.A. Zenios, “What drives the performance of financial institutions?” in P.T. Harker and S.A. Zenios (eds.), Performance of Financial Institutions, (Cambridge University Press, London, 2000), 3–31.
• G.P. Cachon and P.T. Harker, “Competition and outsourcing with scale economies,” Management Science 48 (2002), 1314–1333.
• M. Xue and P.T. Harker, “Customer efficiency: concept and its impact on e-business management,” Journal of Service Research 4 (2002), 253–267.
• Mei Xue, Lorin Hitt and Patrick T. Harker, “Customer efficiency, channel usage and firm performance in retail banking,” Manufacturing and Services Operations Management 9 (2007), 535–558.
• F.X. Frei, P.T. Harker and L.W. Hunter, “Retail banking,” in D.C. Mowrey (ed.), U.S. Industry in 2000: Studies in Competitive Performance (Washington, DC, National Academy Press, 1999), 179–214.

Research Phase IV:  Dean, University President and Federal Reserve President

The next pivot I made was to begin a career as an academic leader and, for the last decade, as President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.  While my ability to publish research was and is limited in these roles, I continued to invest in state-of-the-art research capability in each institution.  Thus, I moved from being the author of the work to developing the researchers and infrastructure to make significant advances in a wide variety of disciplines.  That said, as Fed President, we still communicate our ideas, but in the form of speeches that can be found here:

https://www.philadelphiafed.org/search-results/all-work?searchtype=speeches-harker

• The Lawrence C. Nussdorf Urban Leadership Prize, Penn Institute for Urban Research, University of Pennsylvania, April 2025
• The James B. O’Neill Award for Excellence in Economic Education and Entrepreneurship, University of Delaware, February 2025
• Honorary Doctor of Science, Thomas Jefferson University, May 2017
• Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Delaware, May 2016
• D. Robert Yarnell Award (Engineering Alumnus of the Year), School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, May 2016
• Order of the First State awarded by Governor Jack Markell, May 2015
• Charter Fellow, National Academy of Inventors, December 2012
• Fellow, Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), October 2012
• Monsignor Thomas Reese Award, Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, recognizing exemplary individuals who have demonstrated a deep commitment to promoting and restoring the well-being of people – Catholic Charities’ mission.
• Outstanding Advocacy of Small Business, U.S. Small Business Administration (Delaware), June 2011
• Honorary Degree, Xiamen University, China, October 2009
• Joseph Wharton Award, Wharton Club of Washington, DC, November 2008
• Ivy Football Association honoree, January 2007
• Omega Rho Distinguished Lecturer, INFORMS, November 2006
• 2002 Alan Goldman Lecturer, Department of Mathematical Sciences, The Johns Hopkins University
• 2002 Wei Lun Distinguished Visiting Professor, Chinese University of Hong Kong
• 1998 David W. Hauck Award for Outstanding Teaching in the Undergraduate Division, The Wharton School
• Laurent Picard Distinguished Lecturer, McGill University, Montreal Canada, 1998
• CORE Lecturer, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, 1993
• 1992 Miller-Sherrerd MBA Core Teaching Award, The Wharton School
• White House Fellow, 1991–92 (named by President George H. W. Bush)
• National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, 1986–91on