This paper examines how negative shocks due to, for example, natural disasters, propagate through supply chains, applying a simulation technique to actual data on supply chains of Japanese firms. We obtained the five results. (1) Network structures severely affect the speed of propagation in the...

This paper explores the impact of offshoring, or contracting out of business activities to foreign providers, on firm productivity, using Japanese firm-level data for the period 1994-2000. We find that offshoring has generally a positive effect on productivity growth. This effect is robust to...