Working Papers 1999 – Abstracts

7/99
Forecasting Sales of Slow and Fast Moving Inventories
Ralph D. Snyder

Adaptations of simple exponential smoothing are presented that aim to unify the task of forecasting demand for both slow and fast moving inventories. A feature of the adaptations is that they are designed to ensure that the resulting prediction distributions have only a nonnegative domain. A parametric bootstrap approach is proposed for generating empirical approximations for the so-called lead-time demand distribution, something required for inventory control calculations. The proposed methods are illustrated and their performance compared on real demand data for car parts.
Keywords: Sales forecasting, exponential smoothing, inventory control, bootstrap methods

8/99
Does International Trade Synchronize Business Cycles?
Heather M. Anderson, Noh-Sun Kwark and Farshid Vahid

This paper studies the relationship between international trade and output fluctuations. We find evidence that the business cycles of countries that are more open to international trade are more likely to be synchronized with the business cycles of their major trading partners. A detailed study of the South Korean case shows that while business cycles are related to openness, the diversification of export destinations seems to weaken these links. We find no relationship between openness and output volatility.
Keywords: Coherence, common cycles, openness, synchronization, volatility

Next Abstract