IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedlwp/2011-014.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

When do inventories destabilize the economy? an analytical approach to (S,s) policies

Author

Listed:
  • Pengfei Wang
  • Yi Wen
  • Zhiwei Xu

Abstract

Conventional wisdom has it that inventory investment destabilizes the economy because it is procyclical to sales. Khan and Thomas (2007) show that the conventional wisdom is wrong in a general equilibrium (S,s) model with capital. We argue that their finding is not robust?the conventional wisdom can still hold in general equilibrium if firms can adjust output by varying the capacity utilization rate. Our result also holds true if there exist investment adjustment costs. Unlike the existing (S,s) inventory literature that relies on the Krusell-Smith (1998) numerical solution methods, we characterize (S,s) inventory policies in closed form despite the large state space in our general equilibrium model. Standard log-linearization methods can be used to solve the model and generate impulse response functions.>

Suggested Citation

  • Pengfei Wang & Yi Wen & Zhiwei Xu, 2011. "When do inventories destabilize the economy? an analytical approach to (S,s) policies," Working Papers 2011-014, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2011-014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2011/2011-014.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniele Coen-Pirani, 2004. "Markups, Aggregation, and Inventory Adjustment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1328-1353, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Maican, Florin & Orth, Matilda, 2018. "Inventory Behavior, Demand, and Productivity in Retail," CEPR Discussion Papers 13308, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Wouter Den Haan, 2014. "Inventories and the Role of Goods-Market Frictions for Business Cycles," Discussion Papers 1402, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    3. John D. Tsoukalas, 2011. "Input and Output Inventories in the UK," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 78(311), pages 460-479, July.
    4. Matteo Iacoviello & Fabio Schiantarelli & Scott Schuh, 2011. "Input And Output Inventories In General Equilibrium," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 52(4), pages 1179-1213, November.
    5. Yi Wen, 2011. "Input and Output Inventory Dynamics," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 181-212, October.
    6. Maican, Florin & Orth, Matilda, 2021. "Determinants of economies of scope in retail," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    7. Lin, Winston T. & Kao, Ta-Wei (Daniel), 2014. "The partial adjustment valuation approach with dynamic and variable speeds of adjustment to evaluating and measuring the business value of information technology," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 238(1), pages 208-220.
    8. Zhiwei Xu & Yi Wen & pengfei Wang, 2012. "When Do Inventories Destabilize the Economy? ---A Tractable Approach to (S,s) Policies," 2012 Meeting Papers 288, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    9. Yi Wen, 2008. "Inventories, liquidity, and the macroeconomy," Working Papers 2008-045, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    10. Den Haan, Wouter, 2013. "Inventories and the Role of Goods-Market Frictions for Business Cycles," CEPR Discussion Papers 9628, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inventories; Business cycles;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2011-014. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Anna Oates (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbslus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.