Supply chains — which sectors whiplash at the next recession

Registered 2026-07-24 inside “The Escalation Cost,” with every protocol constant produced by committed code. Carries forward if no recession occurs before July 2031.

The escalation-cost paper closes the framework with a formula for when a system that reacts to lagging measurements amplifies shocks instead of absorbing them — and registers two claims built on it.

The self-service diagnostic. Any firm can compute its own amplification number from its own data, using the paper’s published construction: a persistence estimate, a measurement window, and a reaction strength combine into a single number. Above the boundary, the next demand shock amplifies as it travels up the supply chain — the whiplash pattern known as the bullwhip effect. Below it, the shock decays. The prediction resolves firm by firm, on each firm’s own next demand shock.

The sector bet. The paper’s committed classification sorts seventeen U.S. sectors into nine that oscillate around the amplification boundary and eight that never cross it. The registered claim: at the next officially dated U.S. recession, the oscillating group’s inventory swings will exceed the never-crossing group’s, by a margin passing a standard statistical test fixed in advance.

The classification was extracted mechanically from committed code, not hand-picked — and, as the paper itself notes, the never-crossing group contains a major semiconductor sector. That detail matters: it means the claim is genuinely falsifiable in both directions, with a high-profile industry sitting on the side the framework says should stay calm.

This page reports registered research predictions. It is education, not advice: nothing here is a forecast service or an investment signal.