Guardians of Growth: Can Supply Chain Pressure, Artificial Intelligence, and Economic Inequality Ensure Economic Sustainability

This study examines the effects of supply chain pressure, smart AI, and socio-economic fairness on long-term economic sustainability. To this end, this study uses quarterly data from 1999 Q1 through 2024 Q4 for the United States and employs the recently introduced Wavelet Cross-Quantile Regression (WCQR) to analyze this relationship. This study finds that smart AI, supply chain pressure (SC), and renewable energy consumption (REC) significantly drive U.S. economic growth, with the strongest short-term effects appearing when adoption and output are in the lower quantiles, reflecting threshold and diffusion dynamics. SC enhances growth once supply chain networks reach a critical level of connectivity, while REC generates substantial gains at low penetration levels, illustrating a “catch-up” effect. In contrast, economic inequality (EI) generally dampens growth, especially at moderate to high inequality levels; however, long-term reductions in EI yield positive returns in high-growth states by improving social cohesion and workforce productivity. Based on these findings, this study proposes funding low-adoption AI now, scaling to mid-adoption users mid-term, and entrenching long-term gains through economy-wide upskilling.