ifo Schnelldienst 05/2020: Restart of Industry under the Influence of Covid-19

Restart of Industry under the Influence of Covid-19: How Ready is the Global Supply Chain?

The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic has major implications for the international division of labor. In particular, the supply of inputs from abroad is no longer guaranteed. The absence of workers due to illness or the closure of production facilities – first in China, followed by other Asian and European countries – leads to production losses. If there are no substitutes for these inputs in an importing country, the companies concerned are threatened with production losses or even a production standstill. In view of the coronavirus crisis, should companies rethink their business model of global supply chains and reduce their dependence on global production networks? How closely are the economies actually interwoven? Are “deglobalization” and a shifting of production back to Germany and Europe realistic and, above all, desirable?

With contributions from

• Holger Görg and Saskia Mösle: Global Value Chains in Times of (and after) Covid-19
• Thieß Petersen: Global Supply Chains between Efficiency and Resilience
• Hartmut Egger: Are Global Supply Chains Facing Dismantling after the Crisis?
• Kemal Kilic and Dalia Marin: How Covid-19 Is Changing Germany and the Global Economy
• Lisandra Flach, Rahel Aichele, and Martin Braml: The Status Quo and Future of Global Supply Chains
• Ralph Wiechers and Thomas Steinwachs: This Time Is Different, Again
• Morris Hosseini and Michael Baur: Market Failure in the Supply of Pharmaceuticals Using Antibiotics as an Example
• Kai Joachimsen: What Matters Now
• Ronald Bogaschewsky: Supply Chains in the Stress Test – but Do We Really Want the Old Ones Back?