IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/boc/bocoec/658.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Input and Output Inventories in General Equilibrium

Author

Listed:
  • Matteo Iacoviello

    (Boston College)

  • Fabio Schiantarelli

    (Boston College)

  • Scott Schuh

    (Federal Reserve Bank of Boston)

Abstract

We build and estimate a two-sector (goods and services) dynamic general equilibrium model with two types of inventories: finished goods (output) inventories yield utility services while materials (input) inventories facilitate the production of goods. The model, which contains neutral and inventory-specific technology shocks and preference shocks, is estimated by Bayesian methods. The estimated model replicates the volatility and cyclicality of inventory investment and inventory-target ratios. When estimated over subperiods, the results suggest that changes in the volatility of inventory shocks, or in structural parameters associated with inventories, play a minor role in the reduction of the volatility of output.

Suggested Citation

  • Matteo Iacoviello & Fabio Schiantarelli & Scott Schuh, 2007. "Input and Output Inventories in General Equilibrium," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 658, Boston College Department of Economics, revised 23 Oct 2009.
  • Handle: RePEc:boc:bocoec:658
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://fmwww.bc.edu/EC-P/wp658.pdf
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chirinko, Robert S, 1993. "Business Fixed Investment Spending: Modeling Strategies, Empirical Results, and Policy Implications," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 31(4), pages 1875-1911, December.
    2. Rossana, Robert J, 1990. "Interrelated Demands for Buffer Stocks and Productive Inputs: Estimates for Two-Digit Manufacturing Industries," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(1), pages 19-29, February.
    3. Yongseung Jung & Tack Yun, 2005. "Monetary policy shocks, inventory dynamics, and price-setting behavior," Working Paper Series 2006-02, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    4. James A. Kahn & Mark Bils, 2000. "What Inventory Behavior Tells Us about Business Cycles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 458-481, June.
    5. Greenwood, Jeremy & Hercowitz, Zvi & Krusell, Per, 2000. "The role of investment-specific technological change in the business cycle," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 91-115, January.
    6. Kimura, Takeshi & Shiotani, Kyosuke, 2009. "Stabilized business cycles with increased output volatility at high frequencies," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 1-19, March.
    7. Robert S. Pindyck, 1994. "Inventories and the Short-Run Dynamics of Commodity Prices," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(1), pages 141-159, Spring.
    8. Hansen, Gary D., 1985. "Indivisible labor and the business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 309-327, November.
    9. Daniel J. Vine & Valerie A. Ramey, 2006. "Declining Volatility in the U.S. Automobile Industry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1876-1889, December.
    10. Jordi Galí & J. David López-Salido, 2003. "Rule-of-Thumb Consumers and the Design of Interest Rate Rules," Working Papers 104, Barcelona School of Economics.
    11. Baxter, Marianne, 1996. "Are Consumer Durables Important for Business Cycles?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 78(1), pages 147-155, February.
    12. 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.
    13. Marianne Baxter & Robert G. King, 1999. "Measuring Business Cycles: Approximate Band-Pass Filters For Economic Time Series," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(4), pages 575-593, November.
    14. Humphreys, Brad R. & Maccini, Louis J. & Schuh, Scott, 2001. "Input and output inventories," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 347-375, April.
    15. Robert S. Chirinko, 1992. "Business Fixed Investment Spending: A Critical survey of Modeling Strategies, Empirical Results, and Policy Implications," Working Papers 9213, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
    16. Piyabha Kongsamut & Sergio Rebelo & Danyang Xie, 2001. "Beyond Balanced Growth," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 68(4), pages 869-882.
    17. Jonas D. M. Fisher & Andreas Hornstein, 2000. "(S, s) Inventory Policies in General Equilibrium," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 67(1), pages 117-145.
    18. Alejandro Justiniano & Giorgio E. Primiceri, 2008. "The Time-Varying Volatility of Macroeconomic Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 604-641, June.
    19. repec:bla:revinw:v:48:y:2002:i:2:p:217-33 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Ireland, Peter N., 1997. "A small, structural, quarterly model for monetary policy evaluation," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 83-108, December.
    21. Yi Wen, 2011. "Input and Output Inventory Dynamics," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 181-212, October.
    22. Kahn, James A, 1987. "Inventories and the Volatility of Production," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(4), pages 667-679, September.
    23. Steven J. Davis & James A. Kahn, 2008. "Interpreting the Great Moderation: Changes in the Volatility of Economic Activity at the Macro and Micro Levels," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(4), pages 155-180, Fall.
    24. Irvine, F. Owen, 2005. "Trend breaks in US inventory to sales ratios," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 13-23, January.
    25. Peter N. Ireland, 2004. "Technology Shocks in the New Keynesian Model," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(4), pages 923-936, November.
    26. Del Negro, Marco & Schorfheide, Frank, 2008. "Forming priors for DSGE models (and how it affects the assessment of nominal rigidities)," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(7), pages 1191-1208, October.
    27. Yi Wen, 2005. "The multiplier: a general equilibrium analysis of multi-stage-fabrication economy with inventories," Working Papers 2005-046, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    28. Greenwood, Jeremy & Hercowitz, Zvi & Krusell, Per, 1997. "Long-Run Implications of Investment-Specific Technological Change," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(3), pages 342-362, June.
    29. Whelan, Karl, 2003. "A Two-Sector Approach to Modeling U.S. NIPA Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 35(4), pages 627-656, August.
    30. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2003. "Has the Business Cycle Changed and Why?," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2002, Volume 17, pages 159-230, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    31. Shaghil Ahmed & Andrew Levin & Beth Anne Wilson, 2004. "Recent U.S. Macroeconomic Stability: Good Policies, Good Practices, or Good Luck?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(3), pages 824-832, August.
    32. Martin Feldstein & Alan Auerbach, 1976. "Inventory Behavior in Durable-Goods Manufacturing: The Target-Adjustment Model," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 7(2), pages 351-408.
    33. Martin Boileau & Marc-Andre Letendre, 2011. "Inventories, sticky prices, and the persistence of output and inflation," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(10), pages 1161-1174.
    34. Sylvain Leduc & Keith Sill, 2007. "Monetary Policy, Oil Shocks, and TFP: Accounting for the Decline in U.S. Volatility," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 10(4), pages 595-614, October.
    35. Bharat Trehan & Milton Marquis, 2005. "Accounting for the Secular "Decline" of U.S. Manufacturing," 2005 Meeting Papers 455, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    36. Lawrence J. Christiano & Terry J. Fitzgerald, 1989. "The magnitude of the speculative motive for holding inventories in a real business cycle model," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 10, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    37. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1982. "Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1345-1370, November.
    38. Alan S. Blinder & Louis J. Maccini, 1991. "Taking Stock: A Critical Assessment of Recent Research on Inventories," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 73-96, Winter.
    39. Huang, Kevin X. D. & Liu, Zheng, 2001. "Production chains and general equilibrium aggregate dynamics," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 437-462, October.
    40. Rogerson, Richard, 1988. "Indivisible labor, lotteries and equilibrium," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 3-16, January.
    41. Aubhik Khan & Julia K. Thomas, 2007. "Inventories and the Business Cycle: An Equilibrium Analysis of ( S , s ) Policies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(4), pages 1165-1188, September.
    42. Ramey, Valerie A & Vine, Daniel J, 2004. "Why Do Real and Nominal Inventory-Sales Ratios Have Different Trends?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(5), pages 959-963, October.
    43. Cooper, Russell & Haltiwanger, John, 1990. "Inventories and the Propagation of Sectoral Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 170-190, March.
    44. Frank Schorfheide, 2000. "Loss function-based evaluation of DSGE models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(6), pages 645-670.
    45. Juan Carlos Conesa & Timothy J. Kehoe & Kim J. Ruhl, 2007. "Modeling great depressions: the depression in Finland in the 1990s," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 31(Nov), pages 16-44.
    46. Olivier Blanchard & John Simon, 2001. "The Long and Large Decline in U.S. Output Volatility," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 32(1), pages 135-174.
    47. Feenstra, Robert C., 1986. "Functional equivalence between liquidity costs and the utility of money," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 271-291, March.
    48. F. Owen Irvine & Scott Schuh, 2007. "The roles of comovement and inventory investment in the reduction of output volatility," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Nov.
    49. Marquis, Milton H. & Trehan, Bharat, 2008. "On using relative prices to measure capital-specific technological progress," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 1390-1406, December.
    50. Piyabha Kongsamut & Sergio Rebelo & Danyang Xie, 2001. "Beyond Balanced Growth," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 68(4), pages 869-882.
    51. James A. Kahn & Margaret M. McConnell, 2002. "Has inventory volatility returned? A look at the current cycle," Current Issues in Economics and Finance, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 8(May).
    52. Irvine, F. Owen & Schuh, Scott, 2005. "Inventory investment and output volatility," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 75-86, January.
    53. Daniele Coen-Pirani, 2004. "Markups, Aggregation, and Inventory Adjustment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1328-1353, December.
    54. Andreas Hornstein & Pierre-Daniel G. Sarte, 2001. "Sticky prices and inventories : production smoothing reconsidered," Working Paper 01-06, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    55. Andres Arias & Gary Hansen & Lee Ohanian, 2007. "Why have business cycle fluctuations become less volatile?," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 32(1), pages 43-58, July.
    56. Gabriel Perez-Quiros & Margaret M. McConnell, 2000. "Output Fluctuations in the United States: What Has Changed since the Early 1980's?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1464-1476, December.
    57. Husted, Steven & Kollintzas, Tryphon, 1987. "Linear Rational Expectations Equilibrium Laws of Motion for Selected U.S. Raw Material Imports," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 28(3), pages 651-670, October.
    58. James A. Kahn & Margaret M. McConnell & Gabriel Perez-Quiros, 2002. "On the causes of the increased stability of the U.S. economy," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 8(May), pages 183-202.
    59. Bivin, David, 1993. "The influence of inventories on output and prices: A stage of fabrication approach," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 627-651.
    60. Herrera, Ana Maria & Pesavento, Elena, 2005. "The Decline in U.S. Output Volatility: Structural Changes and Inventory Investment," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 23, pages 462-472, October.
    61. Sungbae An & Frank Schorfheide, 2007. "Bayesian Analysis of DSGE Models," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2-4), pages 113-172.
    62. Chang, Yongsung & Hornstein, Andreas & Sarte, Pierre-Daniel, 2009. "On the employment effects of productivity shocks: The role of inventories, demand elasticity, and sticky prices," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 328-343, April.
    63. Wen, Yi, 2004. "Durable Goods Inventories and the Volatility of Production: Explaining the Less Volatile U.S. Economy," Working Papers 04-01, Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics.
    64. Yongsung Chang & Andreas Hornstein & Pierre-Daniel G. Sarte, 2006. "Understanding how employment responds to productivity shocks in a model with inventories," Working Paper 06-06, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    65. Donghoon Lee & Kenneth I. Wolpin, 2006. "Intersectoral Labor Mobility and the Growth of the Service Sector," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(1), pages 1-46, January.
    66. Martin Boileau & Marc-André Letendre, 2004. "Inventories, Sticky Prices and the Propogation of Nominal Shocks," Department of Economics Working Papers 2004-03, McMaster University.
    67. Karl Whelan, 2002. "A Guide To U.S. Chain Aggregated Nipa Data," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 48(2), pages 217-233, June.
    68. Michael C. Lovell, 1959. "Manufacturers' Inventories, Sales Expectations, and the Acceleration Principle," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 86, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    69. Ramey, Valerie A, 1989. "Inventories as Factors of Production and Economic Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(3), pages 338-354, June.
    70. Marco Del Negro & Frank Schorfheide, 2004. "Priors from General Equilibrium Models for VARS," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 45(2), pages 643-673, May.
    71. Frank Smets & Raf Wouters, 2003. "An Estimated Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model of the Euro Area," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(5), pages 1123-1175, September.
    72. Wen, Yi, 2005. "Understanding the inventory cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(8), pages 1533-1555, November.
    73. Gomme, Paul & Rupert, Peter, 2007. "Theory, measurement and calibration of macroeconomic models," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 460-497, March.
    74. Mr. Sergio Rebelo & Ms. Piyabha Kongsamut & Danyang Xie, 2001. "Beyond Balanced Growth," IMF Working Papers 2001/085, International Monetary Fund.
    75. Christiano, Lawrence J., 1988. "Why does inventory investment fluctuate so much?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2-3), pages 247-280.
    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. Yi Wen, 2011. "Input and Output Inventory Dynamics," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 181-212, October.
    2. Alejandro Justiniano & Giorgio E. Primiceri, 2008. "The Time-Varying Volatility of Macroeconomic Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 604-641, June.
    3. 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.
    4. Leonardo Auernheimer & Danilo Trupkin, 2014. "The Role of Inventories and Capacity Utilization as Shock Absorbers," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 17(1), pages 70-85, January.
    5. Steven J. Davis & James A. Kahn, 2008. "Interpreting the Great Moderation: Changes in the Volatility of Economic Activity at the Macro and Micro Levels," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(4), pages 155-180, Fall.
    6. F. Owen Irvine & Scott Schuh, 2007. "The roles of comovement and inventory investment in the reduction of output volatility," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Nov.
    7. Sarte, Pierre-Daniel & Schwartzman, Felipe & Lubik, Thomas A., 2015. "What inventory behavior tells us about how business cycles have changed," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 264-283.
    8. Aubhik Khan & Julia K. Thomas, 2004. "Modeling inventories over the business cycle," Working Papers 04-13, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    9. Thomas A. Lubik & Wing Leong Teo, 2009. "Inventories and optimal monetary policy," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 95(Fall), pages 357-382.
    10. Humphreys, Brad R. & Maccini, Louis J. & Schuh, Scott, 2001. "Input and output inventories," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 347-375, April.
    11. Yi Wen, 2008. "Inventories, liquidity, and the macroeconomy," Working Papers 2008-045, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    12. Nils Gottfries & Glenn Mickelsson & Karolina Stadin, 2021. "Deep Dynamics," CESifo Working Paper Series 8873, CESifo.
    13. Maccini, Louis J. & Moore, Bartholomew & Schaller, Huntley, 2015. "Inventory behavior with permanent sales shocks," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 290-313.
    14. Aubhik Khan & Julia K. Thomas, 2007. "Inventories and the Business Cycle: An Equilibrium Analysis of ( S , s ) Policies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(4), pages 1165-1188, September.
    15. Bivin, David G., 2008. "Production management, output volatility, and good luck," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 2118-2136, July.
    16. Gottfries, Nils & Mickelsson, Glenn & Stadin, Karolina, 2018. "Deep Dynamics," Working Paper Series 2018:10, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    17. Dai Tiantian & Liu Xiangbo & Sun Wei, 2020. "The effects of monetary policy on input inventories," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 20(1), pages 1-34, January.
    18. Wouter J. Den Haan & Tiancheng Sun, 2024. "The Role of Sell Frictions for Inventories and Business Cycles," Discussion Papers 2426, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    19. Wen, Yi, 2003. "Understanding the Inventory Cycle: I. Partial Equilibrium Analysis," Working Papers 03-08, Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics.
    20. Sedjro Aaron Alovokpinhou & Christopher Malikane & Tshepo Mokoka, 2022. "Inventory dynamics and endogenous persistence in a new Keynesian model," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(17), pages 1957-1973, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inventories; business cycles; output volatility; Bayesian estimation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

    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:boc:bocoec:658. 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: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/debocus.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.