The basket of goods reflects the most commonly bought goods in an economy. When calculating inflation, statisticians check these 1,000 most commonly bought goods and multiplier price changes by their respective weighting. There is an interesting interactive graph here at the NYT showing the different components of the US basket of goods, used to calculate …
Internal Devaluation – where a country seeks to regain competitiveness through lowering wage costs and increasing productivity and not reducing the value of the exchange rate. A devaluation of the currency is a decision to allow a currency, in a fixed or semi-fixed exchange rate, to decrease in value. Devaluing the currency means that the …
Economists generally agree that a high inflation rate has various economic costs and therefore, we should use economic policy to keep inflation low. Since the mid 1980s, governments have increasingly set strict inflation targets, e.g. ECB inflation of less than 2%. The Bank of England targeting inflation of 2% +/-1. However, some economists argue that …
Readers Question: Can there be economic growth without an increase in the money supply? Can there be growth with zero inflation? There can be economic growth with zero inflation. This could occur if there was improvements in productivity, which caused lower costs and higher output at the same time. If you take a particular sector …
Readers Question: Does money printing/QE always lead to inflation and price increases? No. Increasing the money supply does not necessarily cause inflation. In particular, we have seen a large increase in the monetary base (narrow money) that hasn’t led to an increase in the general price level. If you look at link between money supply …
Readers Question: Can you please elaborate on “fiscal devaluation” as a suggested solution for Euro area competitiveness problems? Fiscal devaluation is an attempt to restore competitiveness through changes to the tax system. In an exchange rate devaluation, a country allows its currency to fall in value. This makes the countries exports cheaper and more competitive; …
Readers Question: I understand that inflation can cut the value of debt for countries and companies, because higher prices mean more revenue for the same output therefore additional money to pay of debt. However, does this apply to personal debt? i.e. unless my wages are rising with inflation I have no extra revenue and therefore …
Readers Question: Why is Inflation negative when prices are rising? In 2009, there was a brief period of negative inflation (RPI measure of inflation was negative) Often people ask, how come the inflation rate is negative when I notice prices rising? Firstly, if prices in the basket of goods used to measure inflation are rising, …