This paper shows that the debt burden of households, as measured by the debt service to income ratio, is helpful in forecasting the future growth of consumer spending. Not only is the debt-service ratio a statistically significant predictor of future spending growth, it also explains about as...

The high correlation between domestic saving and investment rates in cross country regressions has been interpreted by some authors as evidence that world capital markets are not integrated. Our paper reexamines the long-run saving investment relationship across OECD countries using co...

This paper develops and applies a small econometric model to illustrate the likely short-term macroeconomic effects on the economy of Colombia resulting from the recent discovery and planned development of new oil resources. In performing the analysis, the paper considers various assumptions...

This paper argues that individuals may rationally weight price increases for food and energy products differently from their expenditure shares when forming expectations about price inflation. We develop a simple dynamic model of the economy with gradual price adjustment in the "core" (non-food,...

This paper provides an introduction to alternative models of uncertain commodity prices. A model of commodity price movements is the engine around which any valuation methodology for commodity production projects is built, whether discounted cash flow (DCF) models or the recently developed...