Research Seminar Series on “Global Challenges"

Seminar by Tevin Tafese (German Institute for Global and Area Studies) on "Supply Chain Shocks, Concentration, and Labour Market Resilience: Evidence from Vietnam" (with Van Tran and Jann Lay) jointly organised by Centro Studi Luca d’Agliano and the Dipartimento di Economia, Metodi Quantitativi e Strategie di Impresa (Università Milano Bicocca) in collaboration with BAFFI, the Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods (University of Milan), the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Gestionale (Politecnico di Milano), and the Department of Economics of the University of Insubria.

ABSTRACT: Recent global supply-chain disruptions — including the Covid-19 pandemic, geopolitical tensions, and growing geoeconomic fragmentation — have highlighted the vulnerability of export-dependent economies in the Global South. Vietnam provides an ideal setting to study these dynamics, given its rapid integration into global production networks and its reliance on export-oriented manufacturing, particularly in electronics, textiles, and footwear. This project examines how global supply-chain shocks are transmitted to local labour markets in Vietnam, with a particular focus on the role of concentration in global production networks. In regions or sectors that depend heavily on individual “mega firms” or dominant buyers, external shocks may have disproportionately large effects on employment and wages. The analysis combines worker-level data from Vietnam’s quarterly Labour Force Surveys with shipment-level transaction data from Panjiva. This allows the project to link shocks at the firm, product, and destination-market level to local labour market outcomes and to study heterogeneity across workers, industries, and regions.

 Supported by UniCredit Foundation and Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo as part of the "Global Challenges" network