Title: Exploring inventory trends in six U.S. retail segments
Description: Our paper describes inventory trends for both public and private U.S. firms in six retail segments between 1993 and 2005. This period coincided with the deployment of large-store formats, multiple store formats and extensive channel blurring in the U.S. retail industry. Our analysis is based on aggregate segment-level data from the Annual Retail Trade Survey (ARTS), the Monthly Retail Trade Survey (MRTS), and the U.S. Bureau of the Census end-of-month inventory survey. We find that the end-of-month inventory significantly increased in four of the six retail segments studied and that, after controlling for sales and macroeconomic factors, the positive time trends for the end-of-month inventory remained significant.