Issue:
Increasingly lengthy global supply chains, with many inputs from single low-cost producers, create new sources of fragility in production processes for consumer and industrial goods. This development creates a number of risks, ranging from supply interruptions with national security consequences to disruptions in markets for important consumer goods. Measuring the resilience of supply chains is a first step toward evaluating public and private policies that can strengthen these chains and reduce the risk of shocks that cascade through the economic system.
Objectives:
This project will solicit and support a suite of research projects that will generate insights into the detailed workings and vulnerabilities of supply chains. These studies will help to identify factors affecting the impact of disruptions in industries and the economic impacts of various shocks, some global, others localized.
Value Propositions:
Projects will generate insights that DHS can deploy in assessing supply chain risks. Six funded research projects will be selected, and the working papers from these projects will be broadly disseminated by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and through other channels, and their authors will submit each of these six papers for publication in leading economics journals.
The funded projects will provide new insights on how to measure supply chain resilience and how to identify key nodes in the global production network that are sources of vulnerability for essential goods and services. They will also generate frameworks that can be used to inform decision makers, such as requirements to establish multiple sources for production-critical materials, regulatory requirements for the maintenance of private inventories to reduce the risk of stock-out or supply interruption, or public stockpiles of essential goods.
| Project Lead | National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) |
| Research Team | PI: Laura Alfaro, PhD Co-PI: Chad Syverson, PhD Co-PI: James Poterba, PhD |
| Budget | $1,125,690 |
| Duration | October 2024 – October 2026 |