Supply Chain Economics: Research Landscape and Future Directions

Efficiency, resilience, viability and sustainability of supply chains can impact not only performance of particular firms but also influence national and global economies. However, to date the supply chain research at macro-economic level is rather fragmented and characterized by quite isolate layers of business and economics. Currently, a trend to some integration of these two layers can be observed. For example, supply chain data are used for analysis of shock propagation through national and global economies as well as for achieving sustainability goals, cross-industry ripple effects become of increasing importance in light of global geopolitical uncertainties, and supply chain resilience analysis takes the lens of global ecosystem viability. These and many other examples of connecting business and macroeconomic perspectives of supply chains allow generalizing a novel research area: Supply Chain Economics. In this paper, we begin with outlining management and economics views on supply chains targeting to identify their commonalities and difficulties. We then classify the existing research on the interface of supply chain management and economics identifying future research areas.