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Cost-Push Inflation

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The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics
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Abstract

The concept of cost-push inflation emerged after the Second World War to describe the price increases arising from labour unions pushing up wages despite excessive unemployment. With the oil price shocks of the 1970s, it was used to describe any important shift up in supply schedules at given levels of aggregate demand. Most central banks differentiate between supply shock effects and demand effects by distinguishing between overall inflation and core inflation, the latter omitting the direct contribution of shocks to oil and food prices, the two most important sources of supply shock large enough to register on broad inflation measures.

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Perry, G.L. (2018). Cost-Push Inflation. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_339

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