国际清算银行-通货膨胀的颗粒起源（英）-2025.1_60页_1mb

Summary: The Granular Origins of Inflation

Overview

This paper investigates the role of granular factors—specifically, individual firms and product categories—in aggregate inflation dynamics, using detailed barcode-level price data from 16 advanced and emerging market economies between 2005 and 2022. The decomposition model isolates macroeconomic shocks from granular residuals to assess their contributions to inflation variance.

Key Findings

• Granular Contributions: In advanced economies, the firm granular residual explains 41% of inflation variance, while the category granular residual accounts for an additional 15%. Most firm-level variation stems from idiosyncratic shocks rather than differential responses to common shocks.
• Country Variations: Granular effects are stronger in economies with higher market concentration and lower average inflation. Emerging markets show less importance, with macro shocks dominating due to higher inflation.
• Post-COVID Inflation: Granular factors contributed significantly to the 2021-2022 inflation surge in advanced economies, with the firm component accounting for about one-third of inflation. Relative importance of granular forces increased during this period.
• Retail Dimension: Large retailers also influence inflation, but data imperfections limit robust analysis in emerging markets.
• Cross-Country Covariates: Higher market concentration and lower inflation correlate with greater granular impact.

Conclusion

The paper underscores that granular factors, particularly from large firms, are a major driver of inflation, especially in advanced economies. This challenges traditional focus on macro shocks and provides evidence for the role of market structure and synchronization in price setting.