Postwar Cycles in Manufacturers' Inventories

[14], 146 pages. Footnotes. The text is accompanied by 36 tables and 17 charts. Index. Small scuff on the front dust jacket. Name of previous owner stamped on front free endpaper Includes Acknowledgments, Appendixes, Tables, Appendix Tables, and Charts. Topics covered include Introduction and Summary; The role of inventory investment in business cycles; Manufacturers' inventories and inventory investment; Purchased-materials inventories and inventory investment; Finished-goods inventories and inventory investment; Goods-in-process inventories and inventory investment; Cyclical behavior of inventory and inventory investment movements at the the stages of fabrication; and How Inventory movements contribute to instability. The appendixes contain basic source data, as well as the index numbers and weights used to construct industry deflators. This study deals principally with the behavior of manufactures' stocks-the principal component of nonfarm inventories-since the end of World War II. Among the most important indicators for business cycle analysis are manufacturerers' inventories. According to this study, changes in the rate of inventory accumulation have been a major contributing factor in the nation's postwar recessions. The fluctuations have accounted for at least half of each decline in national product. …