What inventory behavior tells us about how business cycles have changed

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Sarte, Pierre-Daniel; Schwartzman, Felipe; Lubik, Thomas A.
• 署名单位: Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Richmond
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF MONETARY ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3932
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jmoneco.2015.09.007
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 264-283
• 关键词: business cycles; inventories; Investment wedge; financial frictions

摘要

Beginning in the mid-1980s, U.S. business cycles changed in important ways, notably via distinctive shifts in the comovement and relative volatilities of labor productivity, hours, output, and inventories. Inventories provide additional information relative to aggregate investment regarding firms' intertemporal decisions, and thus additional insight in explaining business cycles. We show that variations in the discount factor estimated using inventories, which may be interpreted as fluctuations in a generalized investment wedge, play a key role in explaining the shifts in U.S. business cycles observed after the mid-1980s. Moreover, these variations correlate well with independent measures of credit market frictions. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.