IFDP Paper: How do Firms in Different Sectors Organize their Supply Chains? Evidence from Transaction-Level Import Data
Sebastian Heise, Justin R. Pierce, Georg Schaur, and Peter K. SchottHeise et al. (2021) develop a model-based empirical measure—sellers per shipment (SPS)—to characterize how firms organize supply chains in response to a quality control problem. High SPS indicates spot-market purchasing with costly inspections, while low SPS suggests long-term relationships where buyers pay an incentive premium to prevent cheating.