Talk:Inflation

Cost-Push Inflation

Why is this included as one of the negative effects of inflation? Isn't it just a tad circular to argue that inflation is caused by inflation?

Not sure what you're referring to, but you have to be clear to distinguish between inflation now and inflation later. There is nothing circular about inflation now causing inflation later. We wish it were circular, but based on the current model it only increases. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.65.244.201 (talk) 00:08, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Source improvement request

@SPECIFICO: I see that you were unhappy with a blog reference in a section I added. I'm assuming you are familiar with the state of the economics literature in general, including how the secondary publications diverge in character from hard science and medical reviews and meta-analyses. I suggest these to augment the Economic Policy Institute publication to which you objected:

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20220313161209/http://www.global-isp.org/wp-content/uploads/WP-132.pdf

2. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jacf.12479

3. https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/intaxr29&div=55&id=&page=

±4. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID4049894_code803290.pdf?abstractid=4049894&mirid=1&type=2

I am happy to add any or all. Did you happen to have any doubt about the wikitext description I included? Dan Ratan (talk) 14:35, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

@SPECIFICO: I hope you will not be upset or accuse me of violating WP:BRD if I revert your deletion of my text with the additional references? If you are unhappy in any way, please revert me again. Dan Ratan (talk) 14:44, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Please review WP:RS. We need peer-reviewed recent surveys of the topic of inflation. Not the views of select schools of thought and not self-published documents such as working papers. Moreover, I am not convinced that the text represents due weight of the current RS thinking on the topic. Certainly the "quantity theory" had its 15 minutes of fame and we should let bygones be bygones after huge rounds of monetary expansion have produced nothing remotely like proportionate increases in the price indices. Inflation is a core topic in economics, so we should be able to find a tertiary source of unimpeachable quality such as, e.g. a survey of current thinking in JEL or AER. SPECIFICO talk 15:14, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

@SPECIFICO: should I infer by your emphasis on "recent," that you disapprove of the 2018 source from India, but approve of the late 2021 and 2022 sources?

If inflation is a core topic in economics, why does the Inflation section of the Economics article lack any information about inflation?

Did you miss my question about your opinion of the wikitext summary I included, or am I merely unable to discern your answer?

In either cases, these are the most recent secondary reviews on inflation from the journals you mentioned:

5. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.52.3.679

6. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.52.1.124

7. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20131461

8. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20170721

As I tried to explain, not only are all of them not very recent (because inflation has not been a serious issue for decades, among other reasons) but some of them only support the text I thought best to include by virtue of the fact that they are merely consistent with it, instead of directly pointing to it by implication.

You realize of course, that none of these secondary sources come anywhere near the rigor of WP:MEDRS, don't you? There is one source which meets MEDRS, and is more recent than any of the above four, and is consistent with my wikitext you deleted: (9.) How do you feel about that one? Dan Ratan (talk) 18:26, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

What I said was that we need peer reviewed survey articles or tertiary discussions of inflation. We can't just search those or other journals of similar stature for "inflation" because we do not, as WP editors, decide which aspects or which approaches and viewpoints to emphasize in our artilcles. You could also look for a source in a very recent edition of a mainstream widely-used textbook.There are dozens of such publications from which to chose. This is unrelated to MEDRS. Also, remember that the article text follows the reference sources, not the other way around. SPECIFICO talk 19:23, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Now that is a good idea. Gregory Mankiw's Princciples of Economics (7th Ed.) Part V (chapters 13-17, pp. 257-367) covers the concepts I added as its overarching main ideas -- along with many other ideas of no contemporary relevance at present, and examples which are mostly no longer valid, e.g. complaining about NCAA athletes being forbidden from sponsorships, which recently changed, but of course that example has nothing to do with inflation anyway. The concepts in Chapter 30, which is devoted to inflation in general, are already covered well in the article, but downward price inelasticity is explicitly considered inflation on p. 648. This is a far better secondary source than any of those eight journal reviews. But (9.), which certainly does pass WP:MEDRS (did you read it?) only mentions downward price inelasticity very tangentially in relation to energy prices, so it's not a great source for the deleted text I'm replacing withe the addition of the Mankiw textbook source. I should probably get a FRED graph of the profits as a proportion of GDP against the CPI and PPI, maybe. Dan Ratan (talk) 10:34, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

First sentence is incomplete.

I believe the opening sentence should be something along the lines of "Inflation refers to an increase in the money supply, loss of purchasing power of a currency, or increase in the general price level of goods and services". This is more in line with the actual article, and reflects the different usage of the word throughout time. Encyclopaedia Britannica opens its inflation article: "inflation, in economics, collective increases in the supply of money, in money incomes, or in prices.". Personally, I believe the only usage of the word that makes actually makes sense is as an expansion in the money supply. Prices don't inflate, they rise and fall based on the supply of money relative to the production of goods and services. Defining inflation as a rise in the CPI is like defining rain as a rise in water level of a lake. It is the rain which CAUSES the lake to rise, and inflation which CAUSES the CPI to increase. Arrowmouse (talk) 21:00, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

You've provided the argument against calling inflation an increase in the money stock. Anyway, that is not the mainstream view. SPECIFICO talk 21:19, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Please explain how I have argued that. As stated in the history section, the term inflation was originally used to mean the money supply had expanded/was debased. Only in the last ~100 years have people generally referred to rising prices as inflation, rather than the root cause. I will accept that today when people in 'the mainstream' refer to inflation they mean rising prices, even if that definition is not logical.

When referring to financial 'bubbles' we commonly say the bubble is 'inflating' on the way up and and 'deflating' on the way down, using the analogy of a volume of something (money) being rushing into a sector causing those prices to rise. But how can a bubble in a narrow asset class such as tulips or gold 'inflate', if 'inflation' is the general rise of all prices? Arrowmouse (talk) 00:17, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm having a hard time understanding your concern. But just clicking on the first reference link at the bottom of this talk page -- it says inflation is a diminution in the purchasing poiwer of money. That is not the "inflation of the money stock" thingy. Once again, the "inflation is an increase in the money stock" bit is not the mainstream view. SPECIFICO talk 01:07, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Also, without getting into FORUM and Original Research territory, you should be aware that the Bernancke "quantitative easing" after the 2008 financial crisis greatly increased the amount of reserves (money) in the economy without causing a corresponding price inflation. That was the last gasp of Uncle Miltie Friedman's quantity theory. SPECIFICO talk 01:15, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Working paper?

@SPECIFICO: regarding [1], is the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Economic Review article a working paper? Sandizer (talk) 09:35, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, more or less. Others may have more information. It's not the worst possible source, but it's not a good one. It's basically self-published ruminations. This is a controversial issue, and without secondary comment that points to the KC study as being particularly significant, I would suggest we try to find a more solid source. The issue has been widely discussed, and Biden has made it a key talking point at times, so there should be lots of good secondary and tertiary sourcing available if you choose to investigate further. SPECIFICO talk 16:09, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

I will look for those. Do you think Figure 5 on page 32 here would be a good addition to the article? Sandizer (talk) 17:09, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Causes

In my opinion, the present text of the section "Causes" is structured in a not entirely appropriate way, simply listing the opinions of various, partly historical, theoretical schools, often without any citation, and ignoring distinguishing between outdated and more current views. It seems more suitable to focus on contemporary thinking on inflation causes in academic circles and central banks, presenting earlier historical debates on the matter in a subsection clearly marked as such. Also, the section lacks citations in many places, and some information, like the subsection "Profiteering under consolidation", seems to receive somewhat undue attention. Økonom (talk) 10:51, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

+1 to @Økonom recomendation, I am going to put a tag on this section -- its really messy and doesn't reflect some of the biggest actual causes as experienced by consumers (i.e. when a war causes price change) or the growing threat of climate change to cause effects, like the drought in Panama caused by climate change effecting supply chains, Sadads (talk) 12:31, 29 February 2024 (UTC)