inflation

Today (October 25, 2023), the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest – Consumer Price Index, Australia – for the September-quarter 2023. The data showed a slight uptick in the quarterly rate of inflation with the CPI rising by 1.2 per cent (up 0.4 points), largely due to petrol price rises and rental increases. The…

Today (September 25, 2023), the Australian government issued its – Working Future: The Australian Government’s White Paper on Jobs and Opportunities – statement, which portends to define labour market vision and policy for the years to come. White Paper’s are grand statement and this one falls short of that requirement. Compared to the path-breaking –…

Josh Martin and Julian Reynolds How much have higher import prices increased consumer prices in the UK and euro area? This post explores this question using a framework grounded in some fundamental economic and national accounting concepts. Starting with the GDP price, we adjust for relative import and export prices to arrive at a consumer … Continue reading Has the import price shock been worse in the UK or euro area? →

Two items this Wednesday before the music segment. First, we saw the stark ideology of the elites on full display in Sydney yesterday with a property developer demanding the government increase unemployment by 40-50 per cent to show the workers that the employer is boss and redistribute more national income back to profits. For anyone…

Ivan Yotzov, Philip Bunn, Nicholas Bloom, Paul Mizen and Gregory Thwaites Inflation in 2023 remains elevated across many advanced economies. Existing studies have considered the contribution of profits to persistently high inflation in the US, euro area and UK. To add to this debate, we recently asked firms in the Decision Maker Panel about their … Continue reading Profit margins and firm price growth: evidence from the Decision Maker Panel →

Sophie Piton, Ivan Yotzov and Ed Manuel How have profits behaved in this context of sustained level of inflation? In part, the answer depends on how ‘profits’ are defined. Some broad measures suggest increasing profits, but conflate market and non-market sector dynamics and omit important corporate costs. We construct an alternative measure of corporate profits … Continue reading Profits in a time of inflation: some insights from recent and past energy shocks in the UK →

Yesterday (August 29, 2023), the incoming Reserve Bank of Australia governor was confronted with ‘activists’ as she prepared to present to an audience at the Australian National University in Canberra. They presented her with an application for unemployment benefits and had done her the favour of already filling it in with her name. It was…

Hela Mrabet and Jack Page The rise in commodity prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had a direct and noticeable impact on consumers’ bills for energy and food. But firms also felt the brunt of higher costs. How did firms pass on these cost shocks through the supply chain and all the way onto consumer … Continue reading How do firms pass energy and food costs through the supply chain →

Yesterday (August 15, 2023), the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest – Wage Price Index, Australia – for the June-quarter 2023, which shows that the aggregate wage index rose by 0.8 per cent over the quarter (steady) and 3.6 per cent over the 12 months. This represented a slowdown over the 12 months on…

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics released the latest US inflation data last week (August 10, 2023) – Consumer Price Index Summary – which showed that overall monthly inflation to be 0.2 per cent and mostly driven by housing. And, once we understand how the housing component is calculated then there is every reason to…