Abstract
Abstract. Recent empirical and theoretical research on business inventories is surveyed and critically evaluated. While most inventory research has had macroeconomic motivations, we focus on its microtheoretic basis and on potential conflicts between theory and evidence. The paper asks two principal questions. First, how can inventories, which are allegedly used by firms to stabilize production, nonetheless be a destabilizing factor at the macroeconomic level? Second, why, if firms are following the production‐smoothing model, is production more variable than sales in many industries? We suggest that the so‐called (S,s) model may help answer both questions.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 291-328 |
Number of pages | 38 |
Journal | Journal of Economic Surveys |
Volume | 5 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 1991 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Economics and Econometrics
Keywords
- Inventories
- business cycles