Professor Schummer's research areas include game theory and mechanism design.

Within those areas, Professor Schummer's work ranges from foundational models yielding qualitative insights, to more practical models yielding more direct advice. A central theme in his work is the question: Taking incentives into account, how can goods best be (re)allocated?  Professor Schummer's past work on auctions is an example of this. He is currently working on the design of incentive mechanisms for the reallocation of airport landing slots, the assignment of randomly arriving objects, and on matching and scheduling platforms.