Research Areas
My research focuses on understanding how manufacturing capabilities can be rapidly mobilized in response to sudden-shocks and disruptions, how regional economic ecosystems support or constrain such mobilization; and the role that industrial capabilities and regional ecosystems play in realizing national objectives and strategies. I combine engineering and economics perspectives to study:
- Industrial mobilization for critical technologies
- Regional industrial ecosystem assessment and development
- Supply-chain vulnerability and resilience
- Industry, Regional, and National Technology Strategy and Policy
Publications
Short-Term Economic Dynamism as a Policy Tool to Address Supply Shortages During Crises
This paper investigates the role of short-term economic dynamism in responding to crisis induced supply shortages. We focus on the domestic manufacturing ramp-up of surgical masks, respirators, and their intermediary products in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We develop a novel method for timely identification and validation of the evolving state of domestic manufacturing. To unpack the activities of domestic manufacturers and related institutions, we triangulate across 56 qualitative interviews, certifications, Thomasnet.com®, industry associations, and other public data. We find that while large manufacturers could rapidly scale up, onshore, or diversify production to enter into domestic production of critical medical supplies, these large manufacturers alone were insufficient to meet the spike in demand. In face of this shortage, small and medium enterprises (SME), who entered into mask and respirator production as de novo firms, spin-offs, and by diversifying, were important in increasing overall domestic capacity and serving markets unmet by large hospital distributors. These firms often had fewer competencies and resources compared to larger firms, and received less effective government support. Despite these disadvantages, a number of SMEs succeeded in entering into domestic production, and our interviews suggest this capacity could have been better integrated into the national response. We propose new theory for how and when federal and state governments should support short-term economic dynamism (firm entry into target products and/or markets) during crises to address supply shortages, and the types of market and network failures federal or state governments may be most effective at addressing.
Read Full PaperApplication of Text Analytics to Extract and Analyze Material Application Pairs from a Large Scientific Corpus
When assessing the importance of materials (or other components) to a given set of applications, machine analysis of a very large corpus of scientific abstracts can provide an analyst a base of insights to develop further. The use of text analytics reduces the time required to conduct an evaluation, while allowing analysts to experiment with a multitude of different hypotheses. Because the scope and quantity of metadata analyzed can, and should, be large, any divergence from what a human analyst determines and what the text analysis shows provides a prompt for the human analyst to reassess any preliminary findings. In this work, we have successfully extracted material–application pairs and ranked them on their importance. This method provides a novel way to map scientific advances in a particular material to the application for which it is used. Approximately 438,000 titles and abstracts of scientific papers published from 1992 to 2011 were used to examine 16 materials. This analysis used coclustering text analysis to associate individual materials with specific clean energy applications, evaluate the importance of materials to specific applications, and assess their importance to clean energy overall. Our analysis reproduced the judgments of experts in assigning material importance to applications. The validated methods were then used to map the replacement of one material with another material in a specific application (batteries).
Read Full PaperWorking Papers
Varieties of Agglomeration: Disentangling Features of Horizontal and Vertical Agglomeration within the Manufacturing Sector in the United States
We introduce a novel measure of agglomeration that differentiates between horizontal (co-location with the own/peer industries) and vertical (co-location with suppliers) agglomeration. Using employment and establishment data at the US county level and the six-digit industry level, we demonstrate that industries and regions vary in their degree of vertical versus horizontal agglomeration. Industries with a higher contribution of manufactured goods to overall inputs’ value are correlated with vertical agglomeration while more R&D intensive industries are correlated with horizontal agglomeration. Using the semiconductor industry as an example, we illustrate how heterogeneity in industry-county rates of vertical and horizontal agglomeration might reflect differences in the products that firms operating in different counties manufacture. These industry-level and within-industry differences are not observable with existing agglomeration measures. We present a new theoretical framework for regional and industrial policy interventions.
Read Full PaperUnderstanding Production in a Crisis: Potential for & Limitations of Public Data Sources
Analysis of data infrastructure needs for effective crisis response in manufacturing supply chains.