Research theme

Risk and Resilience

Where fragility is hiding inside stable systems.

We track how shocks move through the system, where exposure is most concentrated, and how institutions learn and adapt to change.

Coast Guard cutter escorting a container ship into a harbor at dusk
Current signal

What we study

  • Supply Chains

    Chokepoints, single sources, substitution.

  • Energy Security

    Import dependence, storage, LNG routes.

  • Climate and Insurance

    Reinsurance pricing and physical risk.

  • Demographics and Migration

    Fertility, dependency, and labor supply.

What we believe

Resilience is priced only after the shock.

Efficiency has concentrated production, finance, and logistics in fewer places than the stability suggests: one company's accelerators, one island's fabs, one strait's tanker traffic. We track where redundancy has been engineered out and which price will move first when a shock arrives.

  1. Concentration is the hidden variable.

    One supplier's accelerators and one island's fabs sit under most of the world's frontier compute, and no stockpile substitutes for either inside a year.

  2. Currency defense is now a Treasury-market problem.

    Japan's yen intervention had to be structured to avoid selling Treasuries because a sale would raise the yields that fund the U.S. deficit.

  3. Aging is the slowest shock and the surest.

    Shrinking working-age populations in China, Japan, Korea, and Europe raise the cost of labor and the cost of debt at the same time.

Latest Research

Memo

Jackson Hole and the Conditions for Credible Discretion

Kevin Warsh has pulled the Federal Reserve back from forward guidance. His first Jackson Hole address must show how a more restrained communications regime will preserve a clear monetary-policy rule.

Aug 26, 202611 min
Essay

The Arsenal as Portfolio

Prime contractors are acquiring options on the future industrial base with a rounding error of capital, and the sequence rather than the sum is what should concern policymakers.

Jul 27, 202613 min

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Key questions

  1. How does the shock actually propagate?

  2. Where is exposure most concentrated?

  3. How do institutions learn and adapt?

  4. Which chokepoints matter under stress?