prices

I often hear the phrases \'real price\' or \'justified price\', for example, in the question of ambulances or hospitals. They make my economic hair stand on end. It reminds me of how deeply embedded healthcare is in the price thinking of planned economics. Before 1989 in Slovakia, the whole economy was run on the principle of price. A manager in a company calculated the price of steel, plastic, and man-hours to produce one Škoda 120 car, for example.

You have probably heard it before: „Dishonest speculators are manipulating asset prices extensively. They make unjust and therefore undeserved profits. These vicious individuals only enrich themselves immorally at the expense of society as a whole, whose members, unlike them, depend on honest work to obtain scarce resources.

Already in May, the National Statistical Institute of Bulgaria announced long-awaited news: on a monthly basis, the general consumer price index recorded a decline for the first time since the beginning of the war, and in June, this trend continued, even more noticeably. This has also been accompanied by a cooling down of the annual price change, which has fallen well below its peak since autumn 2022.

In this article we look at the connection between industrial and consumer prices in Bulgaria in an attempt to determine to what extent the industrial price index can be used to forecast the future dynamics of consumer inflation.

The solutions to combat inflation that Danuše Nerudová proposes are not good ones. A price cap on energy can lead to nothing but shortages. Financially incentivizing households and industry to reduce energy consumption is useless in a world of market prices.

One of the debates which has intensified recently is to what extent is lax monetary policy causing the increase in the price inflation.

The 20th anniversary of the euro was marked by an increase in price inflation. In the euro area, annual consumer price inflation reached 5% in December 2021. Lithuania recorded the highest rate of 11%.

The inflation in Hungary is just as bad as it is in the rest of Europe: in 2021 the rate of the inflation was 7.4%, which was a 13-year-old record. It is a logical step from the government that they want to reduce its level and want to moderate the prices.

Inflation is often referred to as a tax, imposed without parliamentary approval, without legislation and without considering the consequences. Today’s inflation is special: printing money seemed to be pretty much the only way to respond to the pandemic and to finance rising public spending.

Rising consumer prices have become an important issue both in the world and in Slovakia. Although with the current single-digit growth, consumers of the 1970s would have laughed us out, it is good that we are talking about this topic out loud. Perhaps it will help us avoid much bigger problems.