Category Archives: inflation

Inflation across Some Countries

The debate over causes of the inflation surprise in the US is dominated by focus on the fiscal policy and late tightening, among other things. I think it’s of interest to note (again!) that the spike in inflation was not US-specific. Here are two graphs I presented in today’s lecture in the ISF.

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Oil, Risk, and Price Pressures before Putin/Ukraine

A reader, critiquing the argument that the expanded Russian invasion of Ukraine could not explain accelerating inflation before February 2022, observes “The surge of inflation happened well before the war.” I don’t think this characterization is entirely accurate, but in any case, oil prices rose before the so-called “Special Military Operation”, and price pressures showed up concurrently.

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