Measuring demand uncertainty is a key activity in supply chain planning. Of various methods ofestimating the standard deviation of demand, one that has been employed successfully in therecent literature uses dispersion among expertsacirc; forecasts. However, there has been limitedempirical...

Firm-level sales forecasts for retailers can be improved if we incorporate cost of goods sold, inventory, and gross margin (defined by us as the ratio of sales to cost of goods sold) as three endogenous variables. We construct a simultaneous equations model, estimated using public financial and...

In this paper we test the predictive power of abnormal inventory growth to forecast retailers’ earnings. We demonstrate an inverted-U relationship between abnormal inventory growth and one-year ahead earnings per share for retailers. We find this relationship to be robust to different measures...

We empirically analyze how managerial overrides to a commercial algorithm that forecasts demand and schedules labor affect store performance. We analyze administrative data from a large grocery retailer that utilizes a commercial algorithm to forecast demand and schedule labor across all their...

We find that inventory productivity strongly predicts future stock returns among a sample of publicly listed U.S. retailers during the period from 1985 to 2010. A zero-cost portfolio investment strategy, which consists of buying from the two highest and selling from the two lowest quintiles...

The cash flow from the operations of a firm is an endogenous function of the operational variables of the firm -- sales, operating cost, inventory, payables, receivables, etc. Cash flow depends on these variables, and in turn, these variables depend on cash flow and each other through the...