There is a vast body of literature estimating the impact of financial development on economic growth, inequality, and economic stability. A typical empirical study approximates financial development with either one of two measures of financial depth - the ratio of private credit to GDP or stock...

Hedonic regressions are used for property price index measurement to control for changes in the quality-mix of properties transacted. The paper consolidates the hedonic time dummy approach, characteristics approach, and imputation approaches. A practical hedonic methodology is proposed that (i)...

In this paper we provide tools for assessing the house prices and housing valuation. Wedevelop two approaches: (i) borrowing capacity approach, and (ii) intrinsic value approach.The borrowing capacity of households, together with their down payment, implies how muchhousing they can attain. In...

This paper separates the roles of demand for housing services and belief about future house prices in a house price cycle, by utilizing a feature of user-cost-of-housing that it is sensitive to demand for housing services only. Optimality conditions of producing housing services determine...

This paper estimates the causal effect of fiscal rules on fiscal balances in a panel of 142 countries over the period 1985-2015. Our instrumental variable strategy exploits the geographical diffusion of fiscal rules across countries. The intuition is that reforms in neighboring countries may...

Consumer price indexes (CPIs) are compiled at the higher (weighted) level using Laspeyres-type arithmetic averages. This paper questions the suitability of such formulas and considers two counterpart alternatives that use geometric averaging, the Geometric Young and the (price-updated) Geometric...

A key element in the build-up to the global recession and subsequently was the movement in house price indexes (HPIs). These indexes are particularly prone to methodological and coverage differences which can undermine both within-country and cross-country economic analysis. The paper outlines...

Transaction-price residential (house) and commercial property price indexes (RPPIs and CPPIs) have inherent problems of sparse data on heterogeneous properties, more so CPPIs. In an attempt to control for heterogeneity, (repeat-sales and hedonic) panel data regression frameworks are typically...

The COVID-19 pandemic altered consumption patterns significantly in a short period of time. However, official inflation statistics take time to reflect these changes in the weights of the CPI consumption basket. Using credit card data for the UK and Germany, we document how consumption patterns...

Intuitively core inflation is understood as a measure of inflation where noisy price movements are avoided. This is typically achieved by either excluding or downplaying the importance of the most volatile items. However, some of those items show high persistence, and one certainly does not want...