This study investigates the propagation of default risk along the supply chain. We adopt a modified version of the firm-specific upstreamness measure from Gofman et al. (Rev Financ Stud 33:5856–5905, 2020) to assess each firm's vertical distance to the final consumption products in the supply chain. We find that upstream firms are more exposed to default risk, and the upstream effect is more substantial for firms that belong to less prominent, more leveraged, and less diverse supply chains. We also find that a distressed firm only affects its upstream suppliers but not its downstream customers. Our results are robust across various empirical specifications.

本研究调查了违约风险沿供应链的传播。我们采用 Gofman 等人提出的公司特定上游衡量标准的修改版本。（Rev Financ Stud 33:5856–5905, 2020）评估每个公司与供应链中最终消费产品的垂直距离。我们发现，上游企业更容易受到违约风险的影响，对于那些属于不太突出、杠杆率更高、多元化程度较低的供应链的企业来说，上游影响更大。我们还发现，陷入困境的公司只会影响其上游供应商，而不会影响其下游客户。我们的结果在各种经验规范中都是稳健的。