Econometrica

Journal Of The Econometric Society

An International Society for the Advancement of Economic
Theory in its Relation to Statistics and Mathematics

Edited by: Guido W. Imbens • Print ISSN: 0012-9682 • Online ISSN: 1468-0262

Econometrica: Nov, 2023, Volume 91, Issue 6

Tail risk in production networks

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA21064
p. 2089-2123

Ian Dew‐Becker

This paper describes the response of the economy to large shocks in a nonlinear production network. A sector's tail centrality measures how a large negative shock transmits to GDP, that is, the systemic risk of the sector. Tail centrality is theoretically and empirically very different from local centrality measures such as sales share—in a benchmark case, it is measured as a sector's average downstream closeness to final production. It also measures how large differences in sector productivity can generate cross‐country income differences. The paper also uses the results to analyze the determinants of total tail risk in the economy. Increases in interconnectedness can simultaneously reduce the sensitivity of the economy to small shocks while increasing the sensitivity to large shocks. Tail risk is related to conditional granularity, where some sectors become highly influential following negative shocks.


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Supplemental Material

Supplement to "Tail risk in production networks"

Ian Dew-Becker

This online appendix contains material not found within the manuscript.

Supplement to "Tail risk in production networks"

Ian Dew-Becker

The replication package for this paper is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8247084. The Journal checked the data and codes included in the package for their ability to reproduce the results in the paper and approved online appendices.