The standard measure of core or underlying inflation is the inflation rate excluding food and energy prices. This paper constructs an alternative measure, the weighted median inflation rate, for 38 advanced and emerging economies using subclass level disaggregation of the CPI over 1990-2021, and...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Prescription Drug Consumer Price Index (CPI-Rx) has been the focus of considerable controversy in recent years. The CPI-Rx limits its sampling frame to transactions in retail outpatient outlets, and excludes prescription pharmaceuticals dispensed in hospitals,...

There have been important methodological changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) over time. These distort comparisons of inflation from different periods, which have become more prevalent as inflation has risen to 40-year highs. To better contextualize the current run-up in inflation, this...

We establish the Hurwicz-Uzawa integrability of the broad class of discrete-choice additive random-utility models of individual consumer behavior with perfect substitutes preferences and divisible goods. We derive the corresponding indirect uility function and then establish a representative...

GDP is a closely watched indicator of the current health of the economy and an important tool of economic policy. It has been called one of the great inventions of the 20th Century. It is not, however, a persuasive indicator of individual wellbeing or economic progress. There have been calls to...

How does growing international financial diversification affect firm-level and aggregate labor shares? We study this question using a novel framework of firm labor choice in the face of aggregate risk. The theory implies a cross-section of labor risk premia and labor shares that appear as...

Despite the recent inroads made by models of interregional trade based on external" economies, the analysis of the long-run trends in U.S. regional specialization in agriculture manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail trade, services, and all economic activities indicate that" these trends are...

The problem of economic development,' as Lucas (1988) states it, is the problem of accounting for the observed diversity in levels and rates of growth of per capita income across countries and across time. We study conditions under which capital mobility and labor mobility (two seemingly...

We revisit Western Europe's record with labor-productivity convergence, and tentatively extrapolate its implications for the future path of Eastern Europe. The poorer Western European countries caught up with the richer ones through both higher rates of physical capital accumulation and greater...

Entering a currency union without any political union European countries have taken a gamble: will the needs of the currency union force a political integration (as anticipated by Monnet) or will the tensions create a backlash, as suggested by Kaldor, Friedman and many others? We try to answer...