Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/18841 
Year of Publication: 
2004
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 1202
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
Inventory fluctuations are an important phenomenon in business cycles. However, the preliminary data on inventory investment as published in the German national accounts are tremendously prone to revision and therefore ill-equipped to diagnose the current stance of the inventory cycle. The Ifo business survey contains information on the assessments of inventory stocks in manufacturing as well as in retail and wholesale trade. Static factor analysis and a method building on canonical correlations are applied to construct a composite index of inventory fluctuations. Based on recursive estimates, the different variants are assessed as regards the stability of the weighting schemes and the ability to forecast the ?true? inventory fluctuations better than the preliminary official releases.
Subjects: 
inventory investment
revisions
composite indices
canonical correlation
factor models
national accounts data
Ifo business survey
Germany
JEL: 
E22
C32
C52
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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