The stylized facts about the behavior of manufacturers' inventories and backorders over the business cycle: 1959–1980

Recent theoretical work has highlighted the role of inventories in propagating business cycles. This paper attempts to provide an empirical foundation for current and future research on the role inventories play in business cycles. The evidence presented here indicates that inventories and backorders are major variables in predicting output fluctuations. Further, the evidence is that disaggregating inventories by stage-of-fabrication is important in predicting output. In concert with previous findings, our results suggest that disaggregated inventories ought to be a component of models of the business cycle.