Essays on the Technologies of Global Supply Chains
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nigam-vishan-phd-econ-2026-thesis.pdf
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31.01 MB
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Author(s)
Nigam, Vishan Gandhi
Advisor(s)
Atkin, David
Banerjee, Abhijit
Costinot, Arnaud
Stern, Scott
Date Issued
May 2026
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This thesis studies how the technologies of modern supply chains shape global trade and industrial policy design, with an emphasis on the role of organizational innovations within high-tech firms. The three projects combine original firm microdata, including the internal records of global automakers and supply chain startups, with theoretical frameworks from trade, development, and organizational economics. Chapter 1 studies modular design—a revolution in how firms organize innovation—and shows that it concentrates industrial production in large countries. Modular products follow common rules called design platforms and thus can share inputs while remaining customized for local needs. Combining six new datasets on global automotive design and trade, within-firm event studies of platform rollouts and mergers, and a model with scale economies in shared input production, I find that design platforms reshape global trade in two phases. First, platformsharing across destinations increases trade and enables within-firm specialization; for instance, poor countries export engines for affordable car segments. Second, platform-sharing across product segments creates winner-take-all supply chains in which a firm’s largest markets produce most inputs. By quantifying the model, I show that modular design has unequal effects across countries and shapes industrial policy: universal platforms (expected by 2030 for electric vehicles) double American and Chinese input production shares, reduce production by over 80% in most smaller countries, and imply that U.S. input tariffs on China (but not on third countries) have larger reshoring effects. Chapter 2, joint with Brandon Joel Tan, measures reliability—whether firms execute transactions on-schedule—for the universe of Rwandan formal firms, using transaction-timing information in administrative VAT records. Reliable firms have larger interfirm sales, export more, supply exporters and multinationals, and transact with other reliable firms. Reliable firms are also less sensitive to supply chain disruptions. Supplying a multinational increases seller reliability even when the seller services non-MNC buyers. Our results suggest that reliability is a dimension of quality that is particularly important for developing countries. Chapter 3, joint with Aroon Narayanan, introduces partial integration—targeted buyer interventions across firm boundaries—as an alternative to full vertical integration when supply chains are at risk of disruption. Using novel daily-timeline data from Indian manufacturing supply chains, we show that supplier underinvestment in key inputs, stemming from working-capital constraints and noncontractibilities in input use, is the primary driver of disruptions. Buyers respond by exerting control over supplier processes—through in-person monitoring, contingent contracts, and direct sourcing of raw materials—rather than merely advancing cash, and escalate this involvement as disruption risk rises. We develop a three-stage model that rationalizes these strategies and clarifies that buyers control input decisions to prevent resource diversion, while leaving production to suppliers to preserve output-market incentives. The model predicts that relational buyers with low monitoring and sourcing costs enjoy a comparative advantage in fostering resilient trade with poorer regions. Together, the three chapters argue that the technologies firms adopt to organize production are first-order determinants of the global geography of trade and the development opportunities available to lower-income countries.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
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