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Inventories and the Short-Run Dynamics of Commodity Prices

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Author Info
Robert S. Pindyck

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Abstract

Competitive producers hold inventories to reduce costs of adjusting production and to reduce marketing costs by facilitating scheduling and avoiding stockouts. Using data for copper, heating oil, and lumber, I estimate these costs within a structural model of production, sales, and storage, and I study their implications for inventory and price behavior. Unlike earlier studies, this work focuses on homogeneous and fungible commodities. This avoids aggregation problems, and it allows the use of direct measures of units produced, rather than inferences from dollar sales. Also, I estimate Euler equations and allow the marginal value of storage to be a convex function of the stock. This fits the data better, and helps explain the role of storage. Finally, I use futures prices to directly measure the marginal value of storage. I find a production-smoothing role for inventories only for heating oil, and during periods of low or normal prices. A more important role is to reduce marketing costs.

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Publisher Info
Article provided by The RAND Corporation in its journal RAND Journal of Economics.

Volume (Year): 25 (1994)
Issue (Month): 1 (Spring)
Pages: 141-159
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Handle: RePEc:rje:randje:v:25:y:1994:i:spring:p:141-159

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Blanchard, Olivier J, 1983. "The Production and Inventory Behavior of the American Automobile Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(3), pages 365-400, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1988. " Business Cycles and the Behavior of Metals Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 43(5), pages 1075-93, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. French, Kenneth R., 1983. "A comparison of futures and forward prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 311-342, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Eichenbaum, Martin, 1983. "A rational expectations equilibrium model of inventories of finished goods and employment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 259-277. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Williams, Jeffrey, 1987. "Futures Markets: A Consequences of Risk Aversion or Transactions Costs?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(5), pages 1000-1023, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Ramey, Valerie A, 1989. "Inventories as Factors of Production and Economic Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(3), pages 338-54, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Valerie A. Ramey & Kenneth D. West, 1997. "Inventories," NBER Working Papers 6315, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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    • Ramey, Valerie A. & West, Kenneth D., 1999. "Inventories," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 13, pages 863-923 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Ray C. Fair, 1989. "The Production Smoothing Model Is Alive and Well," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 896, Cowles Foundation, Yale University. [Downloadable!]
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  9. Cox, John C. & Ingersoll, Jonathan Jr. & Ross, Stephen A., 1981. "The relation between forward prices and futures prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 321-346, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Miron, Jeffrey A & Zeldes, Stephen P, 1988. "Seasonality, Cost Shocks, and the Production Smoothing Models of Inventories," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(4), pages 877-908, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  11. Eichenbaum, Martin S., 1984. "Rational expectations and the smoothing properties of inventories of finished goods," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 71-96, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  12. Brennan, Michael J & Schwartz, Eduardo S, 1985. "Evaluating Natural Resource Investments," Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(2), pages 135-57, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Kahn, James A, 1987. "Inventories and the Volatility of Production," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(4), pages 667-79, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  14. Blinder, Alan S, 1986. "Can the Production Smoothing Model of Inventory Behavior Be Saved?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 101(3), pages 431-53, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  15. Blinder, Alan S, 1982. "Inventories and Sticky Prices: More on the Microfoundations of Macroeconomics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(3), pages 334-48, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  16. Bresnahan, Timothy F & Suslow, Valerie Y, 1985. "Inventories as an Asset: The Volatility of Copper Prices," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 26(2), pages 409-24, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  17. Eichenbaum, Martin, 1989. "Some Empirical Evidence on the Production Level and Production Cost Smoothing Models of Inventory Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 853-64, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  18. Walter N. Thurman, 1988. "Speculative Carryover: An Empirical Examination of the U.S. Refined Copper Market," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 19(3), pages 420-437, Autumn. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  19. Lester G. Telser, 1958. "Futures Trading and the Storage of Cotton and Wheat," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66, pages 233. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  20. West, Kenneth D, 1986. "A Variance Bounds Test of the Linear Quadratic Inventory Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(2), pages 374-401, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Antonio Spilimbergo, 1995. "Testing the Hypothesis of Collusive Behavior Among OPEC Members," RES Working Papers 4016, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Luca Pieroni & Matteo Ricciarelli, 2005. "Modelling Dynamic Storage Function in Commodity Markets:Theory and Evidence," Quaderni del Dipartimento di Economia, Finanza e Statistica 11/2005, Università di Perugia, Dipartimento Economia, Finanza e Statistica. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Mark Bils & James A. Kahn, 1999. "What Inventory Behavior Tells Us About Business Cycles," NBER Working Papers 7310, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  4. Alquist, Ron & Kilian, Lutz, 2007. "What Do We Learn from the Price of Crude Oil Futures?," CEPR Discussion Papers 6548, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Yungsan Kim & Woon Gyu Choi, 2001. "Has Inventory Investment Been Liquidity-Constrained? Evidence from U.S. Panel Data," IMF Working Papers 01/122, International Monetary Fund. [Downloadable!]
  6. Considine, Timothy J. & Larson, Donald F., 1996. "Uncertainty and the price for crude oil reserves," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1655, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
  7. Robert S. Pindyck, 2003. "Volatility In Natural Gas And Oil Markets," Working Papers 0312, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. [Downloadable!]
  8. Antonio Spilimbergo, 1995. "Prueba de la hipótesis de comportamiento colusivo entre los miembros de la OPEP," RES Working Papers 4017, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department. [Downloadable!]
  9. Matteo Iacoviello & Fabio Schiantarelli & Scott Schuh, 2007. "Input and output inventories in general equilibrium," Working Papers 07-16, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  10. Karali, Berna & Power, Gabriel J., 2009. "What Explains High Commodity Price Volatility? Estimating a Unified Model of Common and Commodity-Specific, High- and Low-Frequency Factors," 2009 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, 2009, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 49576, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. [Downloadable!]
  11. Thille, H., 2002. "Inventions & Price Volatility in a Cournot Duopoly," Working Papers 2002-4, University of Guelph, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  12. Michael Ye & John Zyren & Joanne Shore, 2003. "Elasticity of demand for relative petroleum inventory in the short run," Atlantic Economic Journal, International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 31(1), pages 87-102, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Severin Borenstein & Andrea Shepard, 1996. "Sticky Prices, Inventories, and Market Power in Wholesale Gasoline Markets," NBER Working Papers 5468, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  14. Pindyck, Robert S., 1998. "The long-run evolution of energy prices," Working papers WP 4044-98., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  15. Bukenya, James & Labys, Walter C., 2007. "Do fluctuations in wine stocks affect wine prices?," Working Papers 37317, American Association of Wine Economists. [Downloadable!]
  16. Stanislav Radchenko, 2004. "Anticipated and unanticipated effects of crude oil prices and oil inventory changes on gasoline prices," Microeconomics 0406001, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
  17. Melisso Boschi & Luca Pieroni, 2008. "Aluminium market and the macroeconomy," Quaderni del Dipartimento di Economia, Finanza e Statistica 42/2008, Università di Perugia, Dipartimento Economia, Finanza e Statistica. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  18. Robert S. Pindyck, 1993. "The Present Value Model of Rational Commodity Pricing," NBER Working Papers 4083, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  19. Karali, Berna & Dorfman, Jeffrey H. & Thurman, Walter N., 2008. "Do Inventory and Time-to-Delivery Effects Vary Across Futures Contracts? Insights from a Smoothed Bayesian Estimator," 2008 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2008, Orlando, Florida 6084, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association). [Downloadable!]
  20. Richard D. Farmer, 2006. "Risk-Smoothing Across Time and the Demand for Inventories: A Mean-Variance Approach," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 32(4), pages 699-722, Fall. [Downloadable!]
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