This paper provides direct empirical evidence on the relationship between technology and firms' global sourcing strategies. Using new data on U.S. firms' decisions to contract for manufacturing services from domestic or foreign suppliers, I show that a firm's adoption of communication technology...

More advanced technologies demand higher degrees of specialization - and longer chains of production connecting raw inputs to final outputs. Longer production chains are subject to a "weakest link" effect: they are more fragile and more prone to failure. Optimal chain length is determined by the...

The trade linked to international production networks - supply-chain trade for short - is associated with momentous global economic changes. This paper presents a portrait of the global pattern of supply-chain trade and how it has evolved since 1995. The paper draws on a variety of data sources...

We characterize how firms structure supply chains under climate risk. Using new data on the universe of firm-to-firm transactions from an Indian state, we show that firms diversify sourcing locations, and suppliers exposed to climate risk charge lower prices. Our event-study analysis finds that...

This paper proposes a framework for gross exports accounting that breaks up a country's gross exports into various value-added components by source and additional double counted terms. By identifying which parts of the official trade data are double counted and the sources of the double...

This paper develops an elementary theory of global supply chains. We consider a world economy with an arbitrary number of countries, one factor of production, a continuum of intermediate goods, and one final good. Production of the final good is sequential and subject to mistakes. In the unique...

Using textual analysis of earnings conference calls, we quantify firms' supply chain risk and its sources. Our proxy for supply chain risk exhibits large cross-sectional and time-series variation that aligns with reasonable priors and is unprecedently high during the Covid-19 pandemic. In...

Supply chain problems, previously relegated to specialized journals, now appear in G7 Leaders' Communiqués. Our paper looks at three core elements of the problems: measurement of the links that expose supply chains to disruptions, the nature of the shocks that cause the disruptions, and the...

We investigate the effects of input variety creation and destruction on both micro- and macroeconomic outcomes using detailed data from Belgium. We estimate that marginal costs rise by 0.6% for every 1% of suppliers lost. We show that this elasticity measures the area under the input demand...

Using the universe of large Canadian manufacturing firms in 1988 and 1996, we investigate to what extent outsourcing decision can be explained by a simple property rights model. The unique availability of disaggregate information on outputs as well as inputs permits the construction of a very...