Jonathan W. Welburn

@jwwelburn on Twitter

RAND Researcher; Professor, Pardee RAND Graduate School

Santa Monica Office

Education

Ph.D. in decision science & operations research, University of Wisconsin – Madison; BSc in industrial & systems engineering and economics, University of Wisconsin – Madison

One Page Bio

Overview

Jonathan Welburn, Ph.D., is a researcher at the RAND Corporation, and faculty member at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. His work leverages methods from operations research, computational economics, decision and risk analysis to elucidate emerging systemic risks and the potential for market failures. Along these themes, Welburn’s research has covered topics ranging from systemic risks in the macroeconomy, the economic consequences of large cyber risks, and opportunities for enhanced cyber deterrence.

Currently, Welburn is leading several projects including methods for identifying and prioritizing systemically important entities across sectors of the U.S. economy, the estimation of global interfirm (supply chain) networks, and models of economic disparity.

Welburn’s work has been sponsored by several federal agencies including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Department of Defense, the Air Force, and the Army and has been published in RAND Reports, academic journals, and national news outlets including the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, and the LA Times. In addition to his research at RAND, Welburn is a member of the Aspen Cyber Group, the Society for Risk Analysis council, the Decision Analysis Society council, and a collaborator with the World Economic Forum on Technology, Innovation and Systemic Risk.

Research Focus

Recent Projects

Identification and prioritization of systemically important entities
Global interfirm networks
Disclosure of systemic cyber risk
Narrowing the racial wealth gap

Selected Publications

Welburn, Jonathan W., Aaron Strong, Florentine Eloundou Nekoul, Justin Grana, Krystyna Marcinek, Osonde A. Osoba, Nirabh Koirala, and Claude Messan Setodji, Systemic Risk in the Broad Economy: Interfirm Networks and Shocks in the U.S. Economy, RAND Corporation (RR-4185-RC), 2020

Jonathan William Welburn and Aaron Strong, Systemic Cyber Risk and Aggregate Impacts, Risk Analysis (WR-) (forthcoming)

Vardavas, Raffaele, Aaron Strong, Jennifer Bouey, Jonathan William Welburn, Pedro Nascimento de Lima, Lawrence Baker, Keren Zhu, Michelle Priest, Lynn Hu, and Jeanne S. Ringel,, The Health and Economic Impacts of Nonpharmaceutical Interventions to Address COVID-19: A Decision Support Tool for State and Local Policymakers, RAND Corporation, 2020. (TL-173-1), 222

Welburn, Jonathan W., "Crises Beyond Belief: Findings on contagion, the role of beliefs, and the Eurozone debt crisis from a borrower lender game," Computational Economics, 2018

Languages

French

Commentary

Banking and Financial Services

Financial Panic in the Age of Digital Banking and Social Media
Bank runs as a source of systemic risk are nothing new. To manage systemic risks in the age of social media, regulators may need to anticipate where the crisis will go and build in automatic brakes to slow them down. There likely won't be time to react at the speed of negotiation between regulators and bankers.
Mar 14, 2023
The RAND Blog
Supply Chain Management

Stress Tests: The Right Tool for Strengthening Supply Chains
Isolated interruptions to individual supply chains feel like a thing of the past. Today, the risks are more likely to cut across supply chains and leave companies vulnerable to shared or cascading threats. If we want to make supply chains more resilient, it's time to apply some stress tests.
Aug 10, 2021
Supply Chain Dive
Cybercrime

How the United States Can Deter Ransomware Attacks
To rein in ransomware attacks, the United States needs to upend the risk-reward ratio for hackers and for the countries that harbor or support them. Such a strategy would make networks harder to breach, hit back harder against hackers, and claw back gains from those who succeed.
Aug 9, 2021
Los Angeles Times
Cybersecurity

Supply Chains Have a Cyber Problem
We are entering a world in which cyber disruptions easily become supply chain disruptions, and where supply chains for hardware and software create new cyber risks. Managing these will demand digital-era solutions, including updating tools, regulations, and reporting requirements.
Jun 22, 2021
The RAND Blog
Energy Security

Is DarkSide Really Sorry? Is It Even DarkSide?
The U.S. military relies heavily on commercial energy assets, making the implications of events like the Colonial Pipeline outage more serious than just higher prices at the gas pump. The origins and severity of an attack dictate what the United States might do in response.
May 19, 2021
Defense One
Vaccination

A Case for Vaccinating Teachers First
Most agree that America's 18 million health care workers should top the list for COVID-19 vaccination. The 3.3 million teachers should come next. Vaccinating teachers could make it possible to open schools permanently and get parents back to work. That would help the economy recover.
Dec 19, 2020
The Wall Street Journal
Market Regulation

Too Interconnected to Fail
The 2007–08 financial crisis made regulators and lawmakers acutely aware that some financial institutions had become too big to fail. The next big economic crisis may arise outside the financial sector, in highly networked companies that are too interconnected to fail.
Aug 22, 2020
Wall Street Journal
Macroeconomics

Balancing Public Health and Economic Effects of Physical Distancing: Q&A with Jonathan Welburn
Jonathan Welburn, an operations researcher at RAND, has spent years studying how economic shocks ripple outward like a contagion through the economy. He recently helped develop an online tool that policymakers can use to manage the health and economic effects of COVID-19 interventions.
Jul 13, 2020
Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain Disruptions Due to COVID-19 and Social Distancing
There are significant epidemiological and economic risks and uncertainties with physical distancing policies put into effect in the United States to reduce the growth of COVID-19. We have estimated the economy-wide impacts of a set of these policies to provide a sense of their likely economic toll.
Apr 28, 2020
The RAND Blog
Economic Policy

The Danger of Converting a Health Crisis into a Financial Crisis
The impulse to do something to help businesses right now is well-intended, but lending to companies that were highly leveraged pre-crisis is a risky bet. Assistance could be best directed toward sound enterprises that are likely to survive and contribute to boosting the economy in the coming years.
Apr 13, 2020
CNN
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

The Social Distancing Economy: Q&A with RAND Experts
Congress and the White House are weighing economic policies to help people acutely affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Here are insights from RAND experts on what might be effective in terms of fiscal policy, stimulus spending, and emergency relief to affected workers.
Mar 18, 2020
Cybersecurity

When Cyber Attacks Occur, Who Should Investigate?
Data breaches and cyberattacks cross geopolitical boundaries, targeting individuals, corporations and governments. Creating a global body with a narrow focus on investigating and assigning responsibility for cyberattacks could be the first step to creating a digital world with accountability.
Dec 6, 2018
United Press International
Let's (Not) Play Games with Dodd-Frank
Dodd-Frank, the 2010 financial reform law, is now itself the target of reform. Those involved with the overhaul could draw inspiration from an unlikely source: video games. A simulation game could help predict the effects of changes to regulations—and avoid high-stakes missteps.
May 4, 2017
The Hill

Publications

Draft
Exploring Intergenerational Wealth Transfer Dynamics with Agent-Based Models
Introduces a modeling environment that could be used for testing the long run impacts of policy interventions on differences between white and Black wealth.
Apr 21, 2023
Draft
Interdependence Across the National Critical Functions
Provides a novel interpretation of national critical functions to enhance their use for research by the risk analysis community.
Feb 6, 2023
Report
Overcoming Compound Racial Inequity: Policies and Costs for Closing the Black-White Wealth Gap
The wealth gap between Black and white Americans is the result of inequities compounded over time. Using Survey of Consumer Finances data, the authors analyze the wealth gap and the potential impacts of disparity-reducing wealth-allocation policies.
Dec 7, 2022
Report
Rivalry in the Information Sphere: Russian Conceptions of Information Confrontation
Information confrontation, with historical roots in Russian (and Soviet) military thinking, is an important element of Russian military strategy. The Ukrainian experience offers insights into Russia's present-day and future use of information confrontation and hybrid warfare.
Aug 18, 2022
Journal Article
Cyber Deterrence with Imperfect Attribution and Unverifiable Signaling
Examines a game of deterrence in which the defender can signal its retaliatory capability but can only imperfectly attribute an attack. We show that there are equilibria in which the defender sends noisy signals to increase its expected payoff.
Jul 25, 2022
Report
Identifying Critical IT Products and Services
Researchers have identified the software and businesses that provide critical information technology products and services and developed a framework to continue this analysis as technology evolves. They assessed both software risk and business risk.
Jul 6, 2022
Report
Disclosure of Software Supply Chain Risks
This Perspective presents a set of proposed disclosure rules that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission could implement to help address software supply chain risks and improve security.
May 26, 2022
Report
A Risk Assessment of National Critical Functions During COVID-19: Challenges and Opportunities
This report presents a framework for assessing risk that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) poses to the National Critical Functions, describes challenges in implementing the framework, and provides recommendations for improving it.
Apr 26, 2022
Report
U.S. Air Force Enlisted Classification and Reclassification: Potential Improvements Using Machine Learning and Optimization Models
The authors review options for improving processes for classifying and reclassifying enlisted active-duty, non–prior service airmen for initial skills training in the United States Air Force.
Mar 14, 2022
Report
Cyber Mission Thread Analysis: An Implementation Guide for Process Planning and Execution
Cyber mission thread analysis, which identifies mission-critical systems in a cyber threat environment, requires a disciplined, well-planned process for its execution. This report provides a proposed guide for its planning and implementation.
Mar 10, 2022
Report
Securing the Microelectronics Supply Chain: Four Policy Issues for the U.S. Department of Defense to Consider
The authors analyze how the U.S. Department of Defense could mitigate microelectronics supply chain risk. They consider the appropriate mix of policy levers to promote a microelectronics technology ecosystem that is aligned with U.S. strategic goals.
Feb 28, 2022
Draft
Addressing Emerging Technology Adoption in Food Production through Digital Games
Examines how blockchain, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence with machine learning, and satellite imaging are being or could be implemented to decrease uncertainty and mitigate risks to support agricultural production and distribution.
Dec 29, 2021
Journal Article
Systemic Cyber Risk and Aggregate Impacts
High-profile attacks illustrate the potential for systemic cyber risk. We estimate the aggregate economic impact of firm-specific attacks finding potential large losses from downstream propagations.
Feb 18, 2021
Draft
Estimating the Impact of COVID-19 on Corporate Default Risk
Estimates the impact of COVID-19 and the likelihood of firm defaults, the potential for firm exits, and average firm default probabilities.
Jul 10, 2020
Report
An Estimation of the Economic Costs of Social-Distancing Policies
This report offers a series of economic models that provide an initial assessment of possible short-term economy-wide effects of some social-distancing policies during the coronavirus disease 2019 crisis.
May 4, 2020
Tool
The Health and Economic Impacts of Nonpharmaceutical Interventions to Address COVID-19: A Decision Support Tool for State and Local Policymakers
There is an urgent need for an assessment of public health interventions to address coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and determine when to relax them. This document describes the COVID-19 Decision Support Tool, which is designed to fill that need.
May 4, 2020
Report
Building Agile Combat Support Competencies to Enable Evolving Adaptive Basing Concepts
RAND researchers review the motivations for adaptive basing, describe a footprint model used for estimating its implications for Agile Combat Support (ACS), and discuss recommendations for the ACS community and the U.S. Air Force at large.
Apr 16, 2020
Report
Measuring Cybersecurity and Cyber Resiliency
This report presents a framework for the development of metrics -- and a method for scoring them -- that indicates how well a U.S. Air Force mission or system is expected to perform in a cyber-contested environment.
Mar 26, 2020
Research Brief
Systemic Risk: It's Not Just in the Financial Sector
After a decade of focus on financial firms, new analysis using an innovative approach and new dataset shows that firms in a diverse range of sectors, such as technology and telecommunications, pose a systemic risk to the economy at large.
Feb 3, 2020
Report
Systemic Risk in the Broad Economy: Interfirm Networks and Shocks in the U.S. Economy
Following the 2008 financial crisis, little attention was paid to systemic risks in the economy at large. The authors of this report address that gap, finding evidence that systemic risk extends beyond the financial sector.
Jan 21, 2020
Report
Deterring Attacks Against the Power Grid: Two Approaches for the U.S. Department of Defense
The Defense Department increasingly relies on electric power to accomplish critical missions. This report explores two approaches for deterring attacks against the U.S. power grid: deterrence by denial and deterrence by cost imposition.
Jan 6, 2020
Research Brief
Evaluation Finds Excess Property Program Is Efficient and Effective, but Perceptions About Militarized Police Persist
The Law Enforcement Support Office program is efficient and effectively reuses excess Department of Defense property, but perceptions persist that the program contributes to the militarization of police.
May 21, 2018
Report
An Evaluation of the Department of Defense's Excess Property Program: Law Enforcement Agency Equipment Acquisition Policies, Findings, and Options
The Law Enforcement Support Office (LESO) program is efficiently run and effectively reuses excess Department of Defense property, but this is unlikely to resolve perceptions that the program contributes to the militarization of police.
May 14, 2018
Draft
Crises Beyond Belief: Findings on contagion, the role of beliefs, and the Eurozone debt crisis from a borrower lender game
Presents a borrower-lender game with sequential moves and imperfect information, to discuss the potential for contagion through debt and trade channels while highlighting the role of beliefs.
Mar 6, 2018
Report
Estimating the Global Cost of Cyber Risk: Methodology and Examples
This report shares a transparent and adaptable methodology for estimating present and future global costs of cyber risk. The report has a companion Excel-based modeling and simulation platform that allows users to alter assumptions.
Jan 15, 2018
Report
Stateless Attribution: Toward International Accountability in Cyberspace
This report reviews the state of cyber attribution and examines alternative options for producing standardized and transparent attribution that may overcome concerns about credibility.
Jun 2, 2017