We explore long-term patterns of the house price-income relationship across the 70 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. In line with a standard spatial equilibrium model, our empirical findings indicate that house price-income ratios are typically not stable even over the long run. In contrast,...

The macroeconomic effects of large food price swings can be broad and far-reaching, including the balance of payments of importers and exporters, budgets, inflation, and poverty. For market participants and policymakers, managing low frequency volatility—i.e., the component of volatility...

Trade elasticities are often needed in applied country work for various purposes and this paper describes a method for estimating import demand and export supply elasticities withoutusing econometrics. The paper reports empirical estimates of these elasticities for a large number of low, middle,...

Under standard assumptions, optimum commodity taxation (OCT) should target non-renewable resources (NRRs) in priority. NRRs should be taxed at a higher rate than otherwise-identical conventional commodities. NRR substitutes and complements should receive a particular tax treatment. When reserves...

Optimum commodity taxation theory asks how to raise a given amount of tax revenue while minimizing distortions. We reexamine Ramsey’s inverse elasticity rule in presence of Hotelling-type non-renewable natural resources. Under standard assumptions borrowed from the...