From just-in-time to just-in-case: Global sourcing and firm inventory after the pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic and recent Russia-Ukraine war disrupted global supply chains and led to significant delivery delays, input shortages, and stockout risks. Firms exposed to such risks have been forced to rethink their production and inventory management from just-in-time to just-in-case. Using quarterly Japanese firm-level data, this column shows that relative to firms that purchase inputs only domestically, importers significantly and persistently increased their inventories of intermediate inputs. This suggests the possibility of a shift from just-in-time to just-in-case production after the pandemic.

Inventory plays an important role in international trade. Because of delivery lags and lumpy trade, importers face severe inventory management problems. It is reported that importing firms have approximately twice the inventory of firms that purchase materials only domestically (e.g. Alessandria et al. 2010). Supply chain disruptions during the pandemic have garnered attention from researchers and policymakers regarding the role of inventory as a buffer against input shortages. The previous study shows that among French firms exposed to the Chinese lockdown, those holding more inventories ex-ante performed better in the aftermath of the shock (Lafrogne-Joussier et al. 2022). Furthermore, Alessandria et al. (2023) examine the aggregate effects of supply-chain disruptions in the post-pandemic period and show that firms optimally hold inventories that depend on the source of supply, whether domestic or imported. However, little is known about global sourcing and inventory adjustments to supply chain shocks at the firm level.

Figure 1 shows the quarterly movements in Japan’s manufacturing production and inventory ratio indices (seasonally adjusted) from Q1 2015 to Q2 2022. Manufacturing production was disrupted during Q1-Q2 2020 after the Japanese government took its first emergency measures in April-May in major economic regions. Meanwhile, inventories increased substantially, and their magnitudes were much larger than the decline in production. The inventory ratio declined quickly after Q2 2020 but it increased again after early 2021. It is worth noting that the inventory ratio remains persistently high even though production recovered by 2021. In early 2022, the inventory ratio further increased, probably because of the Shanghai lockdown and the Russia-Ukraine war.

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