A simple real linear-quadratic inventory model is used to determine how cost and demand shocks interacted to cause fluctuations in aggregate GNP and inventories in the U.S., 1947-1986. Cost shocks appear to be the predominant source of fluctuations in inventories, and are largely responsible for...

Casual examination of annual postwar data on inventories and aggregate output for seven developed countries -- Canada, France, West Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, United States -- suggests that in these countries the primary function of aggregate inventories is not to smooth aggregate...

This is a summary and interpretation of some of the literature on stock price volatility that was stimulated by Leroy and Porter (1981) and Shiller (1981a). It appears that neither small sample bias, rational bubbles nor some standard models for expected returns adequately explain stock price...

Empirical examination of some aggregate manufacturing data suggests that order backlogs may help explain two puzzling facts: (1) the variability of production appears to be greater than that of demand, and (2) inventories appear to be drawn down when demand is low, built up when demand is high

It is shown that GNP will have an autoregressive root very close to unity in a variant of Taylor's (1980a,b) overlapping wage contracts model, for stylized versions of simple money supply rules and plausible values for the model's parameters. In this variant, monetary policy is the only reason...

This paper uses a variance bounds test to see whether consumption is too sensitive to news about income to be consistent with a standard permanent income model, under the maintained hypothesis that income has a unit root. It is found that, if anything, consumption is less sensitive than the...

This paper develops asymptotic econometric theory to help understand data generated by a present value model with a discount factor near one. A leading application is to exchange rate models. A key assumption of the asymptotic theory is that the discount factor approaches 1 as the sample size...