Fiscal Stimulus Caused Only 1% of the 8% Rise in U.S. Inflation

This paper delves into the successive Fed rate hikes that began in March 2022 and their far-reaching impact on the domestic and global economy. The paper primarily examines the reasons behind these rate hikes, focusing on their response to the problems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly unemployment and inflation trends. The pandemic triggered widespread lockdowns, leading to severe supply chain disruptions and economic downturns. During this period, unemployment rates rose sharply and reached historic levels. Central banks worldwide had adopted loose monetary policies to stabilize economies in the short term. However, this also raised the risk of persistent inflation. Fiscal stimulus, intermittent interest rate cuts, and a raft of bailouts, such as the CARES Act, have added complexity to the economic landscape, affecting various sectors and necessitating higher interest rates to restore pre-pandemic stability. Disruptions in global supply chains played a key role in stoking inflationary pressures, eroding consumer purchasing powers, and highlighting the urgency for the US Federal Reserve to intervene by adjusting interest rates. Assessing the impact of these rate hikes on stocks shows a resilient market that remained optimistic about the U.S. economic recovery. In addition, the study outlines the impact of these rate hikes on foreign exchange markets, international capital flows, emerging markets, trade dynamics, and global competitiveness.

SummaryThis paper develops a multi-sector and multi-factor structural gravity model that allows an analytical and quantitative decomposition of the emission and output changes into composition and technique effects. We find that the negative production shock of China’s containment policy propagates globally via supply chains, with the carbon-intensive sectors experiencing the greatest carbon emission shocks. We further reveal that China’s current stimulus package in 2021–2025 is consistent with China’s emission intensity-reduction goals for 2025, but further efforts are required to meet China’s carbon emissions-peaking target in 2030 and Cancun 2°C goal. Short-term changes in carbon emissions resulting from lockdowns and initial fiscal stimuli in “economic rescue” period have minor long-term effects, whereas the transitional direction of future fiscal stimulus exerts more predominant impact on long-term carbon emissions. The efficiency improvement effects are more important than the sectoral structure effects of the fiscal stimulus in achieving greener economic growth.

This study aims to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on inflation in Indonesia. The pandemic has had a wide and profound effect on various aspects of life, including the economy. Disruptions in supply chains, changes in consumer demand patterns, and government policies are the main factors affecting inflation during the pandemic. Factory closures and social restrictions have led to shortages of goods and raw materials, thus driving up prices. Meanwhile, the increase in demand for staples and medical products has not been offset by an increase in supply, causing a spike in prices. The government's fiscal and monetary stimulus policies have also increased the money supply, potentially driving further inflation. Fluctuations in energy prices during the pandemic have also contributed to the dynamics of inflation in Indonesia. The bibliometric method is used to identify research trends, inflation and covid-19 in Indonesia as well as researcher collaboration on this topic.

We study the impact of demand and supply factors on bottlenecks and inflation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Initial policy interventions, from lockdowns to fiscal stimuli, triggered shifts in consumer spending and supply chain disruptions. The reopening of economies normalized consumption patterns, but attributing bottlenecks to specific factors remains challenging due to diverse policy responses. This paper empirically integrates fiscal spending, mobility measures, and supply constraints to analyze interconnected factors influencing bottlenecks and inflation internationally. We find an important role played by fiscal shocks and the international propagation of demand and supply forces in shaping bottlenecks and inflation dynamics.

SummaryThe on-going COVID-19 pandemic and consequent lockdowns cast significant impacts on global economy in the short run. Their impact on stability of global electric vehicles (EVs) supply chain and thus our climate ambition in the long run, however, remains hitherto largely unexplored. We aim to address this gap based on an integrated model framework, including assessing supply risks of 17 selected core commodities throughout the EV supply chain and further applying the supply constraints to project future EV sales until 2030. Our model results under three pandemic development scenarios indicate that if the pandemic is effectively contained before 2024, the global EV industry will recover without fundamentally scathed and thus can maintain the same growth trend as in the no-pandemic scenario by 2030. We suggest that fiscal stimulus in the postpandemic era should be directed more toward upgrading the quality of battery products, rather than expanding the production capacity.

In this paper I provide an econometric analysis of correlated discrete event impact on the price of natural gas, namely the Nord Stream’s effect on the European natural gas market. The Nord Stream is a rare large scale event with the potential to induce significant price effects in commodity markets and reshape price dynamics. I collect data from several sources, conduct a series of data transformation techniques, idiosyncratic econometric tests and develop several univariate Arch and Garch estimation models and determine that the implementation of the Nord Stream does in fact have an impact on the price of European natural gas. My research substantiates that the Nord Stream’s effect is priced into European markets during the period between the Nord Stream receiving final approval from the Finnish government on 12th February 2010 and the opening of the 1st pipeline on 11th November 2011. Whilst accounting for the trend, during this period the price of European natural gas is 3.3071% lower. This result is reinforced by a Chow breakpoint test that implies a structural break occurs in the pricing of European natural gas on 12th February 2010. The model also significantly implies that outside of the trend ceteris paribus that a 10% increase in the price of Brent crude oil corresponds to a 1.93% decrease in the price of European natural gas and that a 10% increase in the price of North-Western European coal corresponds to a 3.01427% increase in the price of European natural gas.

We employ an augmented New Keynesian Phillips curve, integrating a global supply chain bottleneck index and comprehensive fiscal stimulus packages, to quantitatively examine the impact of these variables on inflation rates in South Korea using monthly time-series data from 2010 to 2023. The results reveal three key findings. First, the Global Supply Chain Pressure Index (GSCPI), serving as a proxy for global supply chain bottlenecks, has an overall statistically insignificant effect on inflation throughout the observation period. However, during the pandemic, its effect on inflation was statistically significant. Second, the detrended government stimulus packages, proxied by government transfers or government fixed investment, also demonstrated a significant escalating effect on inflation during the pandemic. These findings suggest that both cost-push and demand-pull factors contributed to recent inflation surges. Third, conventional determinants of inflation, such as expected inflation, the domestic output gap, and crude oil prices, consistently influence inflation, aligning with existing literature.

Beginning in mid‐2021, U.S. food prices surged at the fastest pace in decades, due to pandemic‐related supply chain and labor shortages, rising transportation costs and wages, food commodity and fertilizer shocks resulting from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and perhaps demand‐side effects of recent monetary and fiscal stimulus. We decompose the path of domestic food prices into explanatory factors, grouped by supply or demand orientation. Our findings indicate that although supply‐side factors explain most of the observed price changes, the demand‐side factors we studied—particularly the money supply—have a stronger correlation with recent food price increases than they have, historically.

Part of the economic recovery plans implemented by governments following COVID-19 is directed towards the energy transition. To understand the potential effects of these post-COVID green recovery packages on reductions of global greenhouse gas emissions until 2030, we investigated three different approaches. First, we analyzed simulation results of Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) to infer the change in CO2 intensity of GDP that could result from post-COVID low-carbon investment plans. Second, we investigated the scenarios the International Energy Agency (IEA) provided based on a bottom-up energy system model. Combining the two approaches, we found that green recovery packages implemented and planned globally can lead to an emissions reduction of merely 1%–6% from the 2030 baseline levels at most. Third, we looked into the results of the Adaptative Regional Input-Output model, which simulates the dynamic effects of economic crisis and fiscal stimuli through supply chains following labor shortage. The third approach shows that the increase of activity driven by fiscal stimuli leads to a rebound of CO2 emissions even if they do not target carbon-intensive sectors. We conclude that green recovery packages targeting low-carbon technologies have a limited impact on near-term CO2 emissions and that demand-side incentives, as well as other policy efforts to disincentivize the use of fossil fuels, are also crucial for scaling up climate mitigation.

Natural gas infrastructure is growing and global LNG volumes are set to expand substantially. This results in more trade between different regions of the world and emergence of a more competitive and relatively more integrated global gas market. In addition, several key markets are currently undergoing structural reform with the aim of opening them to competition. In line with these changes in the global market, gas pricing methods also need to be adapted. This paper discusses the challenges of natural gas pricing and price review in this new market environment. Firstly, the current structure of the global and regional gas markets is analyzed. Secondly, challenges in natural gas pricing and price review are discussed, and in this context oil-indexation and hub-indexation are analyzed in detail. Thirdly, the recommended framework for pricing and price review in the more competitive global market are presented. The pricing mechanism and price review framework should be tailored to the characteristics of the gas market and the stages of growth and maturity of the market.

The considerable share of natural gas in the aggregated gross available energy clearly indicates the resource’s importance for the energy security of EU states. Natural gas shortages caused by energy crises result in the resource’s price increases in foreign markets. The condition of the global energy system translates directly to the prices of natural gas for households. The main research objectives were the analysis of prices of household natural gas in the EU, and identification of key factors affecting the prices of household natural gas in Poland and their effect on the prices established in domestic tariffs. The secondary data analysis method (desk research) was used in the research. The 2017–2022 data were acquired from Eurostat, the Polish distributor’s (PGNiG SA) tariffs, the Energy Regulatory Office and exchange information. The paper fills a research gap in the disparity of prices of natural gas supplied to final individual recipients in the EU. It was established that the sudden increases in natural gas purchase prices on energy resource exchanges translated into a similarly dynamic increase in the household gas fuel prices. The price data concerning Poland were compared to analogous data from other EU member states. It was established that in the period between the first half of 2021 and the first half of 2022, gas prices in the EU increased by over 34% on average (maximum of 150%). It was concluded that the household natural gas prices in Poland, established in the officially approved distribution tariffs of PGNiG SA, are substantially affected by two factors: energy resource purchase prices on the Polish Power Exchange (TGE), and purchase prices on foreign markets. The main reason for price increases was the unforeseen substantial changes in the conditions of conducting business activity by PGNiG SA in terms of gas fuel trading, resulting from the increase in high-methane natural gas purchase price at the TGE. On the other hand, the increases in purchase price of natural gas imported from EU or EFTA member states by 2021 have moderately translated into increases in prices established in officially approved tariffs. A similar effect of household natural gas price increase has also occurred in other EU member states but was not uniform. The effect depended on the volume of gas production and consumption in the given country, and on the diversity of gas sources that determined the resource’s purchase price.

Economic Vulnerabilities and Livelihoods: Impact of <scp>COVID</scp>‐19 in Fiji and Vanuatu

Building responsive and resilient supply chains: Lessons from the <scp>COVID</scp>‐19 disruption

Analysis of individual natural gas consumption and price elasticity: Evidence from billing data in Italy

The rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted many economic activities around the world. The complete and partial lockdown policies, as well as the closure of borders by many countries has halted trade, consequently disrupting domestic and international supply chain networks. Like many other countries, various economic sectors in Pakistan also bore high economic losses due to these disruptions. Multiple studies have analyzed on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on different economic sectors in Pakistan, i.e. construction, accommodation and food, manufacturing, wholesale and retail goods, energy, and the information and communication sectors. However, no study has examined sorting these economic sectors based on supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic. Therefore, this study aims to observe the resilience of these economic sectors and perform sorting using three predefined classes, i.e. severe, moderate, and low disruptions. For this purpose, we propose using the novel methodology fuzzy VIKORSort, which is the major contribution of this paper. This methodology evaluates the aforementioned economic sectors based on 10 criteria. The results of the study revealed that the accommodation and food sector, along with the construction sector, experienced the most severe disruption, followed by manufacturing, wholesale and retail goods, and energy, with moderate disruption, whereas the information and communication sector bore the least disruption. The proposed methodology will help the researchers and authorities deal with sorting and decision problems to prioritize the preventive measures of such undesirable events.