This paper uses a descriptive statistical approach to identify longer-term patterns, or empirical regularities, in the prices of 16 prominent metals from 1950 to 2010. We also examine some related aspects of the behaviour of the corresponding volumes. Our approach is to summarise the data in the...

We argue that the workings of world metal markets can be characterised by three facts: Fact One: Global determinants of prices do not dominate market-specific ones. Fact Two (in its simplest form): The relative price of a metal is inversely proportional to its relative volume of production. If,...

Cornelsen et al. (2014) and Green et al. (2013) provide a comprehensive review/summary of a large number of recent estimates of the price responsiveness of food consumption using a meta-regression approach. For seven food items, they present uncompensated elasticities that include both the...

This paper introduces an inverse differential demand system that has exactly the same form as the corresponding direct version. Its application is illustrated with the case of Australian fruit, whose prices were substantially affected by Severe Tropical Cyclone Larry in 2006.

In its widely-cited Investment Monitor, Access Economics publishes quarterly detailed information on most Australian investment projects that cost more than $5m, including a classification of projects as “possible”, “under consideration”, “committed”, “under construction”,...

Accurate and timely measures of cross-country real incomes are still a rarity. As the share of expenditure devoted to food is readily available, we use of Engel’s law in reciprocal form to measure affluence. Analysis of real income data for the OECD countries indicates that this approach is...