Abstract
Purpose - We study whether the bullwhip effect is prevalent among Korean firms and how the characteristics of it differ from the ones in other countries. Design/methodology/approach - We obtained quarterly financial and operational information on KOSPI-listed firms in manufacturing, wholesale, and retail industries from 2013 to 2019. We explore the variation of the bullwhip effect across firms and validate hypotheses. Findings - First, we find that for the KOSPI-listed firms, the bullwhip effect is more prevalent compared with the production smoothing. We provide additional findings by using sub-samples of manufacturing firms, wholesaling and retailing firms, big-sized firms, small- and medium-sized firms, domestic-sales intensive firms, and export intensive firms. Second, we show that in general, the bullwhip effect of Korean firms increases with the days in inventory or the demand seasonality ratio. However, the persistence of demand shock does not affect the bullwhip effect of Korean firms. Research implications or Originality - We compare our results with those in other studies that use information on the U.S. and Chinese firms. Our findings show that factors explaining the bullwhip effect across Korean firms have similarities and differences compared with firms in the U.S. and Chinese firms.