The strong rise in home prices since the mid-1990s has raised concerns over a possible bubble in the housing market and the effect of a sharp price decline on the U.S. economy. This article assesses two measures frequently cited to support a bubble - the rising price-to-income ratio and the...

The main conclusions drawn from the authors' analysis are as follows. There has been significant improvement in the physical adequacy of the housing stock over the past few decades, particularly for households in the lowest income quintile. As a result, today there is very little difference...

Economists have not been altogether successful in their efforts to forecast "core" inflation — an inflation measure that typically excludes volatile food and energy prices. One possible explanation is that the models used to make these forecasts fail to distinguish the forces influencing price...

Since the late 1990s, the combination of relatively high services inflation and declining goods prices has produced a record-level gap in these inflation rates. Some commentators argue that if the gap between services and goods inflation continues to expand in this manner, the outcome will be...