Study of inventory structures and trends in Sweden and Finland

The aim of the paper is to describe and compare the development of inventory turnover in Swedish and Finnish manufacturing industries from mid-seventies to mid-eighties. The manufacturing sector has been disaggregated to branches of industry and different types (input, WIP and output) of inventories. There are three main findings: (i) There is no great difference between the two countries concerning total inventory turnover, even though the structure of inventories is quite different. (ii) The inventory turnover levels differ remarkably by branches. (iii) Only about one third of the studied branches in both countries have increased their total inventory turnover in the period examined.