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Associate Professor David Bivin

Education:
Ph.D. in Economics, Purdue University, 1980
M.S. in Economics, Purdue University, 1977
B.S. in Economics, Ball State University, 1976



Office: CA 519
Phone: 317.997.6528
dbivin@iupui.edu
Faculty Website

Production management is the focus of Dr. Bivin’s research. Production management is the science of assembling finished goods from raw materials. The essence of this science is ensuring that the necessary resources are brought together at the right time and place. A poorly managed firm will find that its finished goods are not available to consumers while its warehouse is full of unfinished products because some necessary parts are not available. Coordinating production among the firm’s workstations makes the flow of materials more steady and predictable. The new view of the production process is one in which material s literally flow through the production process with little or no inventories.

Dr. Bivin concentrates on the behavior of production and inventories in manufacturing firms. This minimum inventory tactic is part of an overall strategy known as Just-in-Time (JIT). The name comes from the idea that the products are available only when they are needed, not too early and not too late.

Recently, Dr. Bivin has investigated the significance of JIT for business cycles in the United States. When many firms adopt JIT, the level of inventories in the economy declines and output stabilizes. This reduction and stabilization is important because fluctuations in inventory investment are the major source of recessions. The Macro economy appears to have substantially stabilized in the last 15 years. His research demonstrates how JIT may have contributed to this increased stability.

Selected Publications:
  • “Production Management, Output Volatility, and Good Luck,“, forthcoming, Journal of of Economic Dynamics and Control
  • “Decomposing the Contribution of Smaller Shocks to the Stabilization of GDP”. Economics Letters, Vol 91, pp.444-449.
  • “Managing a Multi-Input Production Function When There are Shocks to Production”. Forthcoming, International Journal of Production Economics.
  • “Industry Evidence of Enhanced Production Stability Since 1984”, International Journal of Production Economics, Vol 103, pp. 438-448.
  • “Has Production Management Improved Since 1984?” Economic Inquiry, Vol. 44 (4): 671-688.
  • “Gauging the Performance of the Linear-Quadratic Inventory Model,” Applied Economics, June 2005.
  • “Firm Performance Under Just-in-Time and Traditional Proxies for Profit Maximization,” International Journal of Production Economics, January 2003.
  • “A model of the Production Lag and Work-in-Process Inventories,” Journal of Macroeconomics, Summer 1999.
  • “Bunching in the Production Process,” Economics Letters, 50 (February) 259-263, 1997.
  • “Disaggregation and the Speed of Adjustment in Inventory Models,” Journal of Macroeconomics, Winter 1994.
  • “Inventories and Interest Rates: A Critique of the Buffer Stock Model,” American Economic Review, March 1986.