ECB’s cheføkonom venter en stigning i inflationen. Tendenser er klarere nu end tidligere. ECB begynder også at vurdere, om ikke huspriser skal indgå stærkere i inflations-opgørelsen. ABN Amro ser mere skeptisk på en øget inflation.
Uddrag fra ABN Amro:
ECB View: Chief Economist Lane still expects inflation to go up – The ECB’s Chief Economist Philip Lane gave wide ranging interview to the FT. Although the ECB has been projecting rising inflation for years now – which has failed to materialise – Mr Lane sounded more confident that this time would be different. He said that ‘now is a little different to two years ago in that there is some evidence of a recovery in inflation.
Two or three years ago, there was a lot of debate about missing wage inflation. But, after a long period of time, we have had wage inflation now for a couple of years’. He added that ‘the fraction of the price level which is most likely to be influenced by wage pressures is moving closer towards the target’ pointing to ‘services inflation is in the high ones now’ but that the problem was that ‘the price level of goods – which is just over half the price index – is still closer to zero than to the target’.
The Chief Economist explained that while there was a degree of pricing power in global goods markets, firms may ‘feel that the current market conditions are not favourable’. However, he judged that ‘there cannot be a permanent disconnect between labour costs and prices’ and that ‘we have persistent wage inflation now’.
On the other hand ‘the contest is between that and the fact we also know inflation is very persistent’ reflecting low inflation expectations. Mr Lane’s overall assessment was that ‘it is likely that inflation is going to move up slowly and that has been our forecast. It is going to take a while’.
We are more pessimistic on the inflation outlook than the ECB. As we have noted before, margin compression tends to drive companies to reduced costs rather than raise prices, especially in a weak economic environment. This points to softening wage and employment growth and continued subdued inflationary pressures.
Housing and inflation – Meanwhile, the ECB’s Chief Economist was also asked about the possibility of using or targeting an inflation measure that put a greater weigh on housing. He said that ‘we at the ECB would agree that there should be more weight on housing – but there is a difficulty and this has been looked at several times before.
One issue is about the consumption element of owning a home – every day you are enjoying the services of living in your own home – versus the fact that it’s also an asset, as you say. So that dual role. Conceptually it is not an insurmountable problem, and we are going to look at it again in the review’.
