Wednesday, June 1, 2022

European inflation rates


The discussion comments are interesting, covering pretty much the entire theoretical, political, and ideological waterfront.  My two cents.

All major developed economies have been running structural deficits for a long time.  Which is sustainable if real economic productivity growth is positive and high.

However, real productivity growth is difficult to measure and it is quite possible that it has been lower than was being assumed, thus making past inflationary deficit spending more consequential than was anticipated, once the mismatch is recognized.

The US is 25% of the global economy and high inflation in the US will spill into our major trading partners in Europe independent of their own inflationary circumstances.  

The Chinese economy is to a large extent dollarized so US inflation gets priced into China as well.

Past bad energy policy in Europe making them substantially dependent on Russian gas and oil and simultaneously closing much of Europe's reliable and successful nuclear industry.

Bad demographics - multi-decades of below replacement fertility combined with Covid-19 accelerated retirements.  Those in the workforce tend to be deflationary whereas children, retirees, non-workforce participants are inflationary.  As the balance between workers and non-workers shifts towards non-workers, inflation rises.  Europe is far along this demographic cliff.

Possibly - Europe is more regulated and market controlled and therefore less adaptive to supply and demand shocks.  This greater managed market policy structure might have made them more prone to higher inflation from lower shocks.

European consumers have lower incomes and lower private savings than in the US.  A higher proportion of their expenditures are on food, shelter and energy than in the US and therefore excess inflation in those areas feeds into consumer impacts faster than in the US.  

All these and more are at least pertinent.

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