The current economic crisis calls for a pandemic-resistant supply chain network in the post-COVID-19 era. This column investigates the Japanese supply chain network at the firm level and discusses its dynamics, resilience, and robustness. It shows that the network can be characterised by a ‘walnut’ structure, with an intricately connected centre surrounded by upstream and downstream components. Despite the maturity of the Japanese economy, the network is actively changing, with fast-growing firms becoming more connected and slow-growing firms moving to the periphery. Fully understanding this structure will be crucial in making supply chain networks resilient to pandemics in the future.

The Covid-19 pandemic has re-opened debate about the merits and drawbacks of highly coordinated global supply chains in manufacturing. This column documents the economic relevance, geographical properties and ownership structure of French manufacturing firms in international just-in-time supply chains – as well as potential implications for global value chains in a post-Covid-19 world. Just-in-time supply chains are likely to become more prevalent, contribute to further regionalisation of international trade, and generate an increase in multinational production.

Many governments are slowly unwinding their economies from nationwide lockdowns. However, re-opening the economy entails a serious trade-off between fostering economic output and keeping the spread of infection low. This column reports several re-opening scenarios for the UK economy, documenting their projected impacts on both GDP and the spread of the virus. The results suggest that it is best to re-open upstream industries first, as they provide a large direct and indirect economic boost at a relatively lower cost in terms of further epidemic spreading.

Low-income countries lack the resources to replicate European-style income support programmes to alleviate the economic impact of COVID-19 lockdowns. In Bangladesh, a key challenge will be to support export-oriented production in the ready-made garment sector, which employs 4 million workers. Whether factories retain or lay off workers in response to government policies – and whether the health crisis escalates into a humanitarian crisis or not – depends crucially on decisions of foreign apparel buyers to honour or drop commitments to previously agreed orders.

With more frequent and severe natural disasters, demand is growing for governments to support affected firms in their recovery. This column investigates the impact of subsidies after the Great East Japan Earthquake. It finds that capital subsidies were effective for the retail sector, but not in the manufacturing or other service sectors. The results suggest that the heterogeneity comes from variations in the degree of private support across sectors rather than variations in supply chain disruption.

Natural disasters can have enormous economic consequences that affect firms both directly and indirectly. Using the example of the Great East Japan Earthquake, this column investigates how the propagation of shocks varies with the characteristics of supply chains. It finds that the indirect effects are far larger than the direct effects. Shocks propagate more widely and are more persistent if supply networks have complex cycles and low input substitutability.

Trade in intermediates (or ‘unbundling of production') and trade in capital have become increasingly important in last 25 years. This column shows that trade in intermediates generates a reallocation of capital across countries that exacerbates world inequality in both income and welfare. Unbundling of production hurts middle-income countries but helps those with high productivity. Trade in intermediates also increases within-country inequality, and this increase is U-shaped in the aggregate productivity level of the country. 

Natural disasters have enormous economic consequences, with the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake providing a particularly stark recent example. This column uses supply chain data for more than one million Japanese firms to explore how negative shocks from natural disasters propagate through firm networks. Shocks are found to propagate very quickly, due in large part to certain ‘hub’ firms that have a high number of supply chain partners. Production substitution is the key to slowing the propagation.

Joining international supply chains has helped some developing nations to industrialise while leaving others by the wayside. This column discusses research that extract lessons from four case studies. It suggests the key to success is combining pro-active investment promotion with customised infrastructure improvements and public-private vocational training that allow investors to fit production from a novel site seamlessly into the company’s international supplier network.