This article analyzes the demand for ethanol in Brazil, from 2001 to 2009, taking into account regional differences in regard of relative price and per capita income. These elements explain significant variability of demand elasticities across regions, a result not yet addressed by the related...

This Selected Issues paper on Australia highlights the IMF’s new Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal Model (GIMF), which is used to examine the macroeconomic implications of alternative fiscal responses to higher revenue. Lower labor and capital income taxes, along with higher public...

During the past three decades the global oil market has seen significant price volatility. Literature to date has not analysed the cross-country effect of the recent episode of price instability. Previous studies have either not considered this period or have not utilised panel data techniques...

This paper studies a panel of China's provinces over the period 1996-2009 during which urban household saving rates increased from 19 percent of disposable income to 30 percent. It finds that the increase in urban saving rates is negatively associated with the decline in real interest rates over...

We consider random utility models with independent and identical type I extreme value distribution of the error terms. To compute the expectation of the compensating variation it is necessary to consider the correlation of the error terms between the state before the price and quality change and...

A 2-parameter class of ordinal utility functions over a pair of goods is discussed with respect to general traits of preferences for luxury. The class contains Cobb-Douglas functions as no-luxury limit; its analytical tractability is probed by simple closed form solutions for Marshallian demand...

Recent years have witnessed a growing proportion of female general practitioners (GPs) worldwide. Because female GPs tend to work fewer hours than male GPs, this continuing trend may accelerate the shortage of GPs. This paper investigates the gender difference in the wage elasticity of...