inflation

Created
Mon, 09/01/2023 - 07:35
Union over the line on numbers voting – and result expected to be in favour of industrial action Teachers are set to go on strike for decent pay after enough members returned ballots to meet the ‘50% plus one’ turnout threshold required under the government’s anti-union laws, according to reports Skwawkbox has received. The percentage […]
Created
Sat, 07/01/2023 - 02:00
In a January 2022 post, we first presented the Global Supply Chain Pressure Index (GSCPI), a parsimonious global measure designed to capture supply chain disruptions using a range of indicators. In this post, we review GSCPI readings through December 2022, and then briefly discuss the drivers of recent moves in the index. While supply chain disruptions have significantly diminished over the course of 2022, the reversion of the index toward a normal historical range has paused over the past three months. Our analysis attributes the recent pause largely to the pandemic in China amid an easing of “Zero COVID” policies.
Created
Thu, 05/01/2023 - 23:00
In a recent post, we introduced the Multivariate Core Trend (MTC), a measure of inflation persistence in the core sectors of the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) price index. With data up to February 2022, we used the MCT to interpret the nature of post-pandemic price spikes, arguing that inflation dynamics were dominated by a persistent component largely common across sectors, which we estimated at around 5 percent. Indeed, over the year, inflation proved to be persistent and broad based, and core PCE inflation is likely to end 2022 near 5 percent. So, what is the MCT telling us today? In this post, we extend our analysis to data through November 2022 and detect signs of a decline in the persistent component of inflation in recent data. We then dissect the layers of inflation persistence to fully understand that decline.