How Do Firms React to Surprising Changes to Demand?: A Vector Autoregressive Analysis Using Business Survey Data

The way in which economic agents respond to unexpected changes to demand is a central issue in contemporary business cycle theories. Although several empirical papers have used macro data to evaluate this issue there are very few results available that have used direct measures of expectation errors from micro panel data. This paper uses micro panel data from a New Zealand quarterly tendency survey to derive expectation errors for nine variables over an unusually long period of 24 years. A vector-autoregressive model is estimated and used to simulate the dynamic reaction of manufacturers to surprising changes to demand. Unexpected changes to demand are important in explaining unplanned changes in output, inventories, employment and labor turnover. Selling price and cost expectation errors are not particularly sensitive to surprising changes to demand.