---
title: "Geopolitical risk and the re-routing of supply chains"
description: "Geopolitical risk is one of the most frequent keywords in the finance and economics journals, and supply chain resilience is a major topic in operations research, but the two rarely meet in OR journals. Customs data can show whether trade re-routes through third countries when geopolitical risk rises, and at what cost."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/geopolitical-risk-and-supply-chain-rerouting
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/geopolitical-risk-and-supply-chain-rerouting.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "Geopolitical risk is one of the most frequent keywords in the finance and economics journals, and supply chain resilience is a major topic in operations research, but the two rarely meet in OR journals."
date: "2026-10-23"
updated: "2026-10-23"
status: "seed"
tags: ["economics", "operations research", "trade"]
keywords: ["geopolitical risk", "supply chain resilience", "reshoring"]
---

# Geopolitical risk and the re-routing of supply chains

Geopolitical risk is one of the most frequent keywords in the finance and economics journals, and supply chain resilience is a major topic in operations research, but the two rarely meet in OR journals. Customs data can show whether trade re-routes through third countries when geopolitical risk rises, and at what cost.

## What prompted this

Since October 2025, 445 papers carry a geopolitical keyword (202 in finance journals, 167 in economics), and "supply chain resilience" appears on 233 (95 in operations research). Only 50 papers carry both kinds of keyword, and only 8 of them are in operations research journals. In the last 30 days "geopolitical risk" is the 31st most frequent keyword.

## Questions

- After geopolitical shocks such as sanctions or tariff rounds, how much trade moves to connector countries rather than disappearing?
- Does re-routing show up in costs and lead times, for example in unit values and shipping times?
- Which network-design models in the OR literature predict the re-routing that actually happens?

## Data that could help

- UN Comtrade or CEPII BACI flows, Chinese customs records and tariff data (the international trade category of the [dataset ranking](/rankings/datasets)).
- The Geopolitical Risk index of Caldara and Iacoviello.
- A gravity model with exporter-year, importer-year and pair fixed effects (see the [equation ranking](/rankings/equations)).

## Next step

Estimate a gravity model for 2015–2025 with the geopolitical risk index interacted with political alignment, and look for trade diverted to third countries.

## Related research activity

*The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26*

| Keyword | Papers, last 30 days | Rank | Papers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26* | Papers, last 36 months |
|---|---:|---:|---|---:|
| geopolitical risk | 17 | #47 | 13, 8, 14, 12, 14, 14, 8, 11, 16, 12, 12, 18, 15, 14, 21, 26, 26, 21, 23, 26, 22, 29, 25, 23, 16, 26, 25, 17, 24, 23, 26, 17, 29, 21, 21, 35, 13 | 703 |
| supply chain resilience | 18 | #39 | 11, 5, 11, 5, 6, 8, 9, 14, 8, 16, 12, 10, 15, 10, 10, 19, 15, 16, 17, 27, 22, 29, 21, 12, 21, 21, 24, 16, 22, 21, 22, 20, 34, 22, 22, 25, 18 | 598 |
| reshoring | 0 | – | 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 2, 0, 0, 4, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0 | 24 |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Geopolitical risk and the re-routing of supply chains. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/geopolitical-risk-and-supply-chain-rerouting

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-geopolitical-risk-and-supply-chain-rerouting,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Geopolitical risk and the re-routing of supply chains},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/geopolitical-risk-and-supply-chain-rerouting}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).