Constraints, Rigidity, and Risk in Global Supply Chains

最近的重大冲击(例如，美国-中国关税上调和新冠肺炎大流行)已通过全球供应链产生影响。因此，人们越来越担心，对外国投入的依赖会使企业乃至整个宏观经济面临更高的风险。例如，人们普遍将通胀卷土重来归咎于供应链中断。此外，最近的政策改革鼓励制造业生产回流。这个项目考察了投入来源的关键微观经济特征，包括能力限制、沉没投资和不确定情况下的决策，是如何引起宏观经济风险的。这些发现将使政策制定者能够更准确地评估供应链风险，并设计政策来管理这些风险。在该项目的第一部分，研究人员将研究供应链中偶尔受到约束的产能限制及其冲击如何影响通胀。当国内或外国公司耗尽产能时，他们有动机通过提高边际成本加价来提高价格。总体而言，具有约束力的限制会改变国内和进口价格的菲利普斯曲线，比如降低形式的成本推动冲击，从而加剧通胀。该项目将这一想法构建成现代多部门、开放经济、新凯恩斯主义模型，应用该框架来解读美国最近的数据，并研究应对供应链中断的最佳货币政策。在该项目的第二部分，研究人员调查了企业如何投资于其供应链能力，以及这些投资对宏观经济冲击的传播有何影响。该项目开发了一个框架，在该框架中，公司进行不可逆转的(沉没)投资以获取投入，这在短期内将买家锁定在供应能力有限并受到冲击的特定供应商。然后探讨了规避风险的买家如何投资于供应商的投资组合以管理风险。此外，它还考察了这些投资如何影响冲击的传播，以及贸易和产业政策是否可以纠正冒险的低效，以减轻总体波动性。这些项目的新颖性在于，它们综合了政策分析所需的供应链风险的微观和宏观视角。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Recent major shocks (e.g., US-China tariff increases and the COVID-19 pandemic) have reverberated through global supply chains. As a result, there is growing concern that dependence on foreign inputs exposes firms, and the macro-economy more broadly, to heightened risks. For example, supply chain disruptions have been widely blamed for the resurgence of inflation. Moreover, recent policy reforms have encouraged reshoring of manufacturing production. This project examines how key microeconomic features of input sourcing, including capacity constraints, sunk investments, and decision making under uncertainty, give rise to macroeconomic risks. The findings will enable policymakers to evaluate supply chain risks more accurately and design policies to manage those risks.In the first part of the project, the researchers will study how occasionally binding capacity constraints in the supply chain, and shocks to them, shape inflation. When domestic or foreign firms exhaust their capacity, they have an incentive to raise their price, by increasing the markup over marginal cost. In the aggregate, binding constraints shift domestic and import price Phillips Curves, like cost-push shocks in reduced form, and thus fuel inflation. Building this idea into a modern multisector, open economy, New Keynesian model, the project applies the framework to interpret recent US data and study optimal monetary policy responses to supply chain disruptions. In the second part of the project, the researchers investigate how firms invest in their supply chain capacity, and how those investments matter for the propagation of macroeconomic shocks. The project develops a framework in which firms undertake irreversible (sunk) investments to source inputs, which lock buyers into particular suppliers in the short run, who have limited supply capacity and are subject to shocks. It then explores how risk averse buyers invest in a portfolio of suppliers to manage risk. Further, it examines how those investments affect the propagation of shocks, and whether trade and industrial policies may correct inefficiencies in risk taking to mitigate aggregate volatility. The novelty of these projects lies in their synthesis of micro- and macro-perspectives on supply chain risks, as needed for policy analysis.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.