The handful of economists who predicted the pandemic-era surge in inflation were right about the rapid price rises but tended to misunderstand the causes, Ben Bernanke and Olivier Blanchard say in new research.
Most central banks and wider economists failed to see the surge coming, and then predicted it would be temporary. Though this analysis proved inaccurate, it was based on an assessment of the labour market that got some things right, Bernanke and Blanchard say.
In the paper, the former
