Category Archives: Uncategorized

EconoFact at Five

Tomorrow, January 20th, EconoFact celebrates its 5 year anniversary, providing non-partisan, incisive analyses on timely and important economic and social policy issues. It does so by bringing to the public debate the expertise of leading economists and social scientists via memos and podcasts.

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CPI Inflation in December

Beware the headlines — month-on-month inflation is (again) down, even if up year-on-year. Trimmed and chained CPI price inflation are also down, while sticky price inflation was flat. Headline and core CPI did surprise on the upside though (m/m, 10 bps over Bloomberg consensus).

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China, Omicron, and US Inflation

When assessing the course of US inflation, it’s helpful to have a model; the one I use is the AD-AS model described in this post. The cost of imported inputs can be interpreted as a cost-push shock (rather than an overheated economy caused by high aggregate demand relative to low potential GDP). In this context, China — as a major supplier of inputs and commodities to the US — looms large. And hence, developments there loom large. The preliminary findings that the Chinese vaccines are not particularly effective against the omicron variant, combined with the Chinese authorities’ zero tolerance for covid infections, means that the disruptions to imports from China are likely to continue for some time.

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