What happens to inflation when individual prices do not behave
Verizon, an American mobile-phone carrier, started offering mobile-phone connections that put no limits on data. “Unlimited adventures, unlimited laughter, unlimited connections,” promised an advert. They might have added “unlimited woe for central bankers”. The category of inflation in which mobile-phone plans feature subsequently plummeted, dragging overall core inflation down by about 0.2 percentage points at a time when it had been forecast to rise.
One-shot changes in prices constantly play havoc with central bankers’ attempts to target inflation down to the last tenth of a percentage point. In early 2019 Germany’s statisticians improved their monitoring of how holiday prices vary with the seasons. Unfortunately this captured volatility that has disrupted the index. In May the prices were 9% down on a year earlier; in June they were 6% up.
In China pork is what matters—the country consumes as much hog meat as the rest of the world combined. Unfortunately an epizootic of African swine fever has recently wiped out at least a third of all the pigs in China. This pushed pork inflation to above 47% in August in a market that is already volatile, contributing nearly half a percentage point to headline inflation.
These are not the only ways in which idiosyncratic price rises trouble the world’s economists. Staff at the International Monetary Fund are suffering from a heady rate of food inflation in their canteen: prices per ounce are up 38% in three years. The result of fewer distortive subsidies, perhaps. Or maybe some sort of programme is needed?
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