The evolution and resilience of supply chain networks: Empirical evidence from microdata.

In recent years, there has been renewed interest in empirical research quantifying the way in which supply chain networks evolved in time.
Does the empirical data reflect the anecdotal evidence of, for example, an increased search for supply chain efficiency at the expense of resiliency? Are firms, as suggested by the trade literature, choosing for single-sourcing and ever more specialized suppliers?

In this proposal, I describe a methodology to construct an empirical supply chain network using a novel trade-flow dataset.
This dataset will allow for a remarkable level of detail, allowing for the first time the study of product-level decisions in supply chain networks.

This dataset will enable the study of the evolution of the supply network structure based on objective graph-theoretic metrics.