Poor countries are more volatile than rich countries, and we know this volatility impedes their growth. We also know that commodity price volatility is a key source of those shocks. This paper explores commodity and manufactures price over the past three centuries to answer three questions: Has...

This paper considers the evidence on real commodity prices from 1900 to 2015 for 40 commodities, representing 8.72 trillion US dollars of production in 2011. In so doing, it suggests and documents a comprehensive typology of real commodity prices, comprising long-run trends, medium-run cycles,...

We characterize optimal urban transportation policies in the presence of congestion and environmental externalities and evaluate their welfare and distributional effects. We present a framework of a municipal government that implements different transportation equilibria through its choice of...

This paper studies one of the largest spatially targeted redevelopment efforts implemented in the United States: public housing demolitions sponsored by the HOPE VI program. Focusing on Chicago, we study welfare and racial disparities in the impacts of demolitions using a structural model that...