The Price of Delay: Supply Disruptions, Product Availability, and Strategic Pricing during the Pandemic

Salomé Baslandze () and Simon Fuchs
Additional contact information
Simon Fuchs: https://www.atlantafed.org/research/economists/fuchs-simon

Policy Hub, 2026, vol. 2026, issue 4, 16

Abstract: During 2020–23, firms did not just face higher costs but faced an unusually tight constraint on product availability. Imports often did not arrive when expected, and port congestion and vessel delays made replenishment unusually uncertain. In Baslandze and Fuchs (2026), we study how these disruptions showed up in consumer prices using newly linked micro data that match shipment-level bills of lading to high-frequency consumer transaction prices. The evidence points to sizable pass-through from delivery shortfalls to prices, above and beyond the standard pass-through of costs. Prices also rise when competitors experience shortfalls, consistent with scarcity weakening competitive pressure inside product markets. We use the estimates in an accounting exercise to calculate the direct and spillover price responses implied by widespread disruptions.

Keywords: supply chains; inflation; delivery delays; strategic interactions; pass-through (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E31 F14 L11 L16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.atlantafed.org/-/media/Project/Atlanta ... -during-pandemic.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:a00068:103744

DOI: 10.29338/ph2026-04

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Policy Hub from Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Robert Sarwark ().