IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/serxxx/v57y2012i02ns0217590812500075.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Eminent Paper Series — Why Do Inventories Rise When Demand Falls In Housing And Other Markets?

Author

Listed:
  • EDWARD P. LAZEAR

    (Graduate School of Business, 518 Memorial Way, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-5015, USA;
    Hoover Institution, 434 Galvez Mall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6010, USA)

Abstract

Inventories and price changes are correlated. The inverse relation is most obvious in housing where inventories build in low-demand markets and shrink in high-demand markets. This is a puzzle. Symmetry of information among buyers and sellers would seem to imply that sellers would change their reservation value by the amount that buyers change their offers. Because there is heterogeneity among buyers in the valuation of a given house, sellers set prices strategically. When demand falls, sellers rationally lower their prices, but not by enough to keep the probability of sale constant. As a result, inventories grow.

Suggested Citation

  • Edward P. Lazear, 2012. "Eminent Paper Series — Why Do Inventories Rise When Demand Falls In Housing And Other Markets?," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 57(02), pages 1-34.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:serxxx:v:57:y:2012:i:02:n:s0217590812500075
    DOI: 10.1142/S0217590812500075
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217590812500075
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S0217590812500075?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:wop:ubisop:0080 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. George A. Akerlof, 2009. "How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why It Matters," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1175-1175.
    3. Adam Copeland & Wendy Dunn & George Hall, 2011. "Inventories and the automobile market," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 42(1), pages 121-149, March.
    4. Karl E. Case, 2008. "The Central Role of Home Prices in the Current Financial Crisis: How Will the Market Clear?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 39(2 (Fall)), pages 161-193.
    5. Alan S. Blinder, 1981. "Retail Inventory Behavior and Business Fluctuations," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 12(2), pages 443-520.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Weiwei Li & Lisheng Weng & Kaixu Zhao & Sidong Zhao & Ping Zhang, 2021. "Research on the Evaluation of Real Estate Inventory Management in China," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-29, November.
    2. Eggenberger, Christian & Rinawi, Miriam & Backes-Gellner, Uschi, 2018. "Occupational specificity: A new measurement based on training curricula and its effect on labor market outcomes," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 97-107.
    3. Lazear, Edward P., 2015. "The impatient salesperson and the delegation of pricing authority," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 63-74.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Edward P. Lazear, 2010. "Why Do Inventories Rise When Demand Falls in Housing and Other Markets?," NBER Working Papers 15878, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Yoshiyuki Arata, 2017. "Endogenous business cycles caused by nonconvex costs and interactions," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 12(2), pages 367-391, July.
    3. ARATA Yoshiyuki, 2015. "Endogenous Business Cycles Caused by Nonconvex Costs and Interactions," Discussion papers 15085, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    4. Stern, Nicholas, 2018. "Public economics as if time matters: Climate change and the dynamics of policy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 4-17.
    5. Jang, Tae-Seok & Sacht, Stephen, 2017. "Modeling consumer confidence and its role for expectation formation: A horse race," Economics Working Papers 2017-04, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Economics.
    6. Guglielmo Maria Caporale & Alex Plastun, 2019. "Price overreactions in the cryptocurrency market," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 46(5), pages 1137-1155, August.
    7. Roy, Saktinil & Kemme, David M., 2012. "Causes of banking crises: Deregulation, credit booms and asset bubbles, then and now," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 270-294.
    8. Klodt, Henning & Lehment, Harmen (ed.), 2009. "The Crisis and Beyond," Kiel E-Books, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), number 60981.
    9. Andreas Hornstein, 1998. "Inventory investment and the business cycle," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Spr, pages 49-71.
    10. Dow Alexander & Dow Sheila C., 2011. "Animal Spirits Revisited," Capitalism and Society, De Gruyter, vol. 6(2), pages 1-25, December.
    11. Benjamin Enke & Florian Zimmermann, 2019. "Correlation Neglect in Belief Formation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(1), pages 313-332.
    12. Hendrik Dalen & Kène Henkens, 2013. "Dilemmas of Downsizing During the Great Recession: Crisis Strategies of European Employers," De Economist, Springer, vol. 161(3), pages 307-329, September.
    13. Nalewaik, Jeremy & Pinto, Eugénio, 2015. "The response of capital goods shipments to demand over the business cycle," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 62-80.
    14. Aubhik Khan & Julia K. Thomas, 2007. "Inventories and the Business Cycle: An Equilibrium Analysis of ( S , s ) Policies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(4), pages 1165-1188, September.
    15. George Kapetanios & James Mitchell & Yongcheol Shin, 2010. "A Nonlinear Panel Model of Cross-sectional Dependence," Working Papers 673, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    16. Andreia Tolciu, 2010. "The Economics of Social Interactions: An Interdisciplinary Ground for Social Scientists?," Forum for Social Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(3), pages 223-242, January.
    17. J. E. King, 2010. "Keynes and ‘Psychology’," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 29(1), pages 1-12, March.
    18. Paul de Grauwe, 2013. "Design Failures in the Eurozone: Can they be fixed?," Europe in Question Discussion Paper Series of the London School of Economics (LEQs) 7, London School of Economics / European Institute.
    19. Tonogi, Akiyuki, 2013. "The Relation between Inventory Investment and Price Dynamics in a Distributive Firm," Research Center for Price Dynamics Working Paper Series 8, Research Center for Price Dynamics, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    20. Kenji Nishizaki & Toshitaka Sekine & Yoichi Ueno, 2014. "Chronic Deflation in Japan," Asian Economic Policy Review, Japan Center for Economic Research, vol. 9(1), pages 20-39, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Housing; inventories; unemployment; vacancies; market; clearing prices; stochastic; demand; D4; R3; M5; L0;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design
    • R3 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location
    • M5 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics
    • L0 - Industrial Organization - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:serxxx:v:57:y:2012:i:02:n:s0217590812500075. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/ser/ser.shtml .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.