Recently a number of papers appeared in the literature which analyzed the movement of the real price of housing in the US. Based on their analysis Mankiw and Weil predicted that housing values in the US would fall by 47% over the next twenty years. Understandably, this prediction raised...

A predominant view among urban economists is that the exponential function is an accurate representation of the spatial distribution of population densities in urban areas but an inadequate representation of the spatial distribution of non-residential activities. In this paper we suggest that...