Economics focus: Sticky situations

摘要

From Washington to Wellington price stability is the desire of central bankers. Many of them have it, more or less: consumer-price inflation is 2.1% in America, 1.6% in the euro area, 2.4% in Britain and 0.6% in Japan. You might suppose that because the overall price level is not changing a lot, nor are individual prices. That is not necessarily so, as economists in both America and Europe are discovering.