The new supply-side era: the O-ring meets geopolitics
Lazard CEO and Chairman Peter Orszag sees a new supply-side era taking shape, in which supply shocks that are increasingly geopolitical in origin and rooted in the physical world have displaced demand as the dominant source of macroeconomic variance.
Lazard CEO and Chairman Peter Orszag sees a new supply-side era taking shape, in which supply shocks that are increasingly geopolitical in origin and rooted in the physical world have displaced demand as the dominant source of macroeconomic variance.
Monday 14 September 2026 | 52 minutes 10 seconds
This is not the supply side of the 1980s: the binding constraint is now the physical and network dependencies that a generation of globalisation wrought. Following UChicago economist Michael Kremer's O-ring logic, a single missing input can halt production far beyond it—which is why these shocks work through the economy slowly and unevenly, surfacing in prices months or years later. Both policymakers and corporate leaders need to adapt their thinking to this new era.