Current Inventory-Sales Relationships

Barry P. Bosworth

Barry P. Bosworth Senior Fellow Emeritus - Economic Studies

The sustained economic expansion of the 1960s has coincided with a declining interest in the inventory-accelerator theory of the business cycle. However, while inventories may have lived down their villainous role in the business cycle literature, they remain a major source of economic instability. And at least once–in 1966-67–they nearly ended the “Hallelujah Chorus” of the economic policy makers. In view of the weak performance of inventories in recent months and revisions in some of the historical data, a reexamination of the pattern of inventory accumulation in recent years may be instructive.