Prof. Gene Grossman, Ph.D.

Supply Chain Resilience

With the increased prevalence of extreme weather events, growing geopolitical tensions and experience with the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain disturbances have become the new normal. Policy-makers worldwide are seeking new ways to improve the resilience of their firms’ global supply chains. In a research project joined by Harvard’s Elhanan Helpman, Gene Grossman is studying the normative principles for promoting resilience. In the paper “Supply Chain Resilience: Should Policy Promote International Diversification or Reshoring” the researchers compare private and social incentives for forming supply relationships in multiple countries, and for forging these links at home versus abroad.

Mr. Grossman’s research over four decades has covered many aspects of international trade, including the relationship between trade and growth, the relationship between trade and the environment, the political economy of trade policy and the causes and consequences of offshoring. In ongoing work with Helpman and Alejandro Sabal, Mr. Grossman is studying the potential divergence between private and social incentives for investing in resilience in a setting with multi-tiered supply chains, endogenous links between buyers and suppliers that result from costly search, and bargaining between transacting parties at each tier. He plans to present the fruits of some of this research at a research seminar while visiting CES.

Gene Grossman is the Jacob Viner Professor of International Economics in the Department of Economics and the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, where he served two terms as department chair. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Council of Foreign Relations, a past winner of the Onassis Prize for International Trade and the Bernard-Harms Prize, and holds Honorary Doctorates from the University of St. Gallen and the University of Minho. Mr. Grossman is also a CESifo Research Network Fellow.