Inventories and Business Cycles in Major Industrialized Countries

经济学家很早就认识到库存在解释商业周期中的重要作用。例如，阿布拉莫维茨在1950年提出，库存是美国商业周期的一个关键因素。不久之后，马修斯强调，商业周期的转折点，尤其是经济衰退，在很大程度上是由库存投资的变化造成的。最近，布林德（Blinder）在1981年和布林德与霍尔茨-埃金（Blinder and Holtz-Eakin）在1986年对美国的最新统计数据进行了记录。从理论的会计意义上讲，1929年后美国经济衰退中，超过一半的国民生产总值从高峰到低谷的下降通常可归因于库存投资的变化。然而，对于库存投资为何如此顺周期，人们并没有达成普遍共识。这为目前的研究提供了动力，旨在将库存行为模型与商业周期理论相结合。将利用七个工业化国家- -加拿大、法国、西德、意大利、日本、英国和美国- -的数据评价库存在商业周期中的作用，并强调数据最好的国家- -加拿大、日本、这项研究将首先考虑美国在经济周期内库存行为方面有充分记录的经验具有多大代表性。然后，它将对总体经济和两位数制造业的结构性库存模型进行估计。扩大用于库存分析的数据范围，包括来自美国以外国家的数据，似乎有可能帮助我们识别一般模式，增强我们区分其他难以区分的假设的能力，并提高我们对关键参数的估计。结果应该是广泛的受众感兴趣，而不仅仅是“库存”专家。

Economists have long recognized the important role for inventories in explaining business cycles. Abramovits, for example, argued in 1950 that inventories were a key factor for U.S. business cycles. A little later Mathews emphasized that business cycle turning points, especially downturns, are to a large extent accounted for by changes in inventory investment. Recently, this has been documented for the U.S. with up-to-date statistics, by Blinder in 1981 and Blinder and Holtz-Eakin in 1986. In an atheoretical accounting sense, over half the peak to trough fall in GNP in post-1929 U.S. recessions has typically been attributable to changes in inventory investment. No general agreement exists, however, as to why inventory investment is so pro-cyclical. This provides the motivation for the present research which seeks to integrate models of inventory behavior with theories of the business cycle. The role of inventories in business cycles will be evaluated using data from seven industrialized countries - Canada, France, West Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. - emphasizing the countries for which the data are best - Canada, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. The research will first consider how representative is the well-documented U.S. experience on the behavior of inventories over the cycle. It will then estimate structural inventory models, for aggregate economies as well as for two-digit manufacturing. Broadening the data used for inventory analysis to include those from countries other than the U.S. seems likely to help us discern general patterns, increase our power to discriminate between otherwise indistinguishable hypotheses, and sharpen our estimates of key parameters.The results should be of interest to a wide audience, not only "inventory" specialists.