English

Production networks and failure avalanches

Physics and Society 2008-12-02 v1 Statistical Mechanics General Finance

Abstract

Although standard economics textbooks are seldom interested in production networks, modern economies are more and more based upon suppliers/customers interactions. One can consider entire sectors of the economy as generalised supply chains. We will take this view in the present paper and study under which conditions local failures to produce or simply to deliver can result in avalanches of shortage and bankruptcies across the network. We will show that a large class of models exhibit scale free distributions of production and wealth among firms and that metastable regions of high production are highly localised.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.physics/0507101,
  title  = {Production networks and failure avalanches},
  author = {Gerard Weisbuch and Stefano Battiston},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/0507101},
  year   = {2008}
}