Search Results
Briefing
Supply Chain Resilience and the Effects of Economic Shocks
Supply chains have long been integral to the U.S. economy, allowing firms to capitalize on specialization and efficiency. However, recent developments like the COVID-19 pandemic, global geopolitical tensions and increasing climate risk have revealed their vulnerabilities as well as their abilities to propagate and amplify economic shocks. In response, firms and policymakers are increasingly focusing on strategies to bolster supply chain resilience. This article explores how economic shocks can propagate through the supply chain, the trade-offs associated with resilience investments, and ...
Report
Input Sourcing Under Supply Chain Risk: Evidence from U.S. Manufacturing Firms
We study the effect of climate risk on how firms organize their supply chains. We use transaction-level data on U.S. manufacturing imports to construct a novel measure of input sourcing risk based on the historical volatility of ocean shipping times. Our measure isolates the unexpected component of shipping times that is induced by weather conditions along more than 40,000 maritime routes. We first document that unexpected shipping delays induced by weather shocks have significant negative effects on importers’ revenues, profits, and employment. We then show that more exposed firms actively ...
Discussion Paper
High Import Prices along the Global Supply Chain Feed Through to U.S. Domestic Prices
The prices of U.S. imported goods, excluding fuel, have increased by 6 percent since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in February 2020. Around half of this increase is due to the substantial rise in the prices of imported industrial supplies, up nearly 30 percent. In this post, we consider the implications of the increase in import prices on U.S. industry inflation rates. In particular, we highlight how rising prices of imported intermediate inputs, like industrial supplies, can have amplified effects through the U.S. economy by increasing the production cost of goods that rely heavily on ...
Journal Article
Tariffs and Trade Disputes
Cover Story of article on "Tariffs and Trade Disputes: How are recent moves affecting businesses in the Fifth District?"
Discussion Paper
Cyberattacks and Supply Chain Disruptions
Cybercrime is one of the most pressing concerns for firms. Hackers perpetrate frequent but isolated ransomware attacks mostly for financial gains, while state-actors use more sophisticated techniques to obtain strategic information such as intellectual property and, in more extreme cases, to disrupt the operations of critical organizations. Thus, they can damage firms’ productive capacity, thereby potentially affecting their customers and suppliers. In this post, which is based on a related Staff Report, we study a particularly severe cyberattack that inadvertently spread beyond its ...
COVID-19 and Supply Chains: A Year of Evolving Disruption
The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland regularly surveys a broad cross-section of businesses in the region it serves and convenes business advisory councils in eight of the region’s major metropolitan areas. The information collected through these surveys and conversations points to trends that are not yet apparent in the data and fills gaps in researchers’ understanding of our region’s economy. The information is helpful to Federal Reserve policymakers during their discussions about the nation’s monetary policy. Anecdotes herein have been edited for length and clarity.
Working Paper
The Surprisingly Swift Decline of U.S. Manufacturing Employment
This paper finds a link between the sharp drop in U.S. manufacturing employment beginning in 2001 and a change in U.S. trade policy that eliminated potential tariff increases on Chinese imports. Industries where the threat of tariff hikes declines the most experience more severe employment losses along with larger increases in the value of imports from China and the number of firms engaged in China-U.S. trade. These results are robust to other potential explanations of the employment loss, and we show that the U.S. employment trends differ from those in the E.U., where there was no change in ...
Journal Article
Supply Chain Disruptions, Trade Costs, and Labor Markets
Global supply chain disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic have increased the costs of trade between countries. Given the interconnectedness of the U.S. economy with the rest of the world, higher trade costs can have important impacts on U.S. labor markets. A model of the U.S. economy that incorporates variation in industry concentrations across regions can help quantify these effects. The analysis suggests that recent global supply disruptions could cause a sizable and persistent reduction in labor force participation.
Discussion Paper
The Anatomy of Export Controls
Governments increasingly use export controls to limit the spread of domestic cutting-edge technologies to other countries. The sectors that are currently involved in this geopolitical race include semiconductors, telecommunications, and artificial intelligence. Despite their growing adoption, little is known about the effect of export controls on supply chains and the productive sector at large. Do export controls induce a selective decoupling of the targeted goods and sectors? How do global customer-supplier relations react to export controls? What are their effects on the productive sector? ...
Journal Article
Global Supply Chain Pressures and U.S. Inflation
Global supply chain disruptions following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to the rapid rise in U.S. inflation over the past two years. Evidence suggests that supply chain pressures pushed up the cost of inputs for goods production and the public’s expectations of higher future prices. These factors accounted for about 60% of the surge in U.S. inflation beginning in early 2021. Supply chain pressures began easing substantially in mid-2022, contributing to the slowdown in inflation.