Inflation and potential drivers

Interesting set of charts here that I picked up from Mauldin Economics. The left hand chart shows annually from 2019 and 2021 inflation change against the change in government disbursements. Countries with larger stimulus packages tended to experience greater inflation acceleration. Compared to other countries New Zealand had the largest fiscal stimulus with a disbursements gap of approximately 19% indicating that government spending and transfers increased sharply relative to pre-pandemic trends.

The right panel of that graphic plots inflation vs. the change in employment. A positive unemployment gap implies that a country’s labour market has yet to recover from the pandemic recession. Across countries, the size of the inflation acceleration is negatively correlated with the unemployment gap, suggesting that differences in labour market slack account for a significant part of the cross-country variation in inflation acceleration.

Source: Mauldin Economics