recent article (N. Brophie, Appleton Post-Crescent) outlines some of the causes and effects of increased inflation. This article lists some Wisconsin-specific influences. Since the BLS only reports limited CPI data for specific areas, not limited to Wisconsin, the discussion is somewhat limited, so the author made some inferences related to housing prices, energy and wage costs. Nevertheless, there are some interesting regional differences.
This is a comparison of rates, zoomed in to the closest Wisconsin (Midwest region to the North Middle East region (subdivision) here). One is year-on-year, and the other is year-on-year, until November.
figure 1: CPI-all inflation, the year-on-year growth rate of all countries (black bold), northeastern region (orange), midwest region (green), midwestern region (red), all in% (decimal format), not used Seasonally adjusted data. NBER-defined recession dates are shaded in gray from peak to trough. source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, NBER and author’s calculation.
As mentioned earlier, the year-on-year inflation rate may obscure recent developments.
figure 2: CPI-All inflations are annualized by country (black bold), northeastern region (orange), central and western regions (green), and central and western regions (red) on a month-on-month basis, expressed as percentages (decimal format) ), using seasonally adjusted data. The author uses census X12 for seasonal adjustment, except for the national CPI. NBER-defined recession dates are shaded in gray from peak to trough. source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, NBER and author’s calculation.
Wall Street Journal’s November article (contributed by Dougherty and Guildford) Pointed out that the South and Midwest caused inflation, and attributed the difference to car fuel and groceries prices.
This is the inflation difference chart of the BLS department.
image 3: CPI inflation rate in November by BLS sector, year-on-year, %. source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Is there a correlation between inflation rate and observable factors? One candidate variable noted is the vaccination rate. Using part of the vaccination rate at the end of June, people find a negative correlation-higher inflation is associated with a lower vaccination rate. Quantile regression shows that for every 1 percentage point increase in partial vaccination rates, the y/y inflation rate will fall by 0.5 percentage points, with a t statistic of 6.0 (simple OLS produces a similar estimate).
Graphical:
Figure 4: Year-on-year scatter plot of inflation in November and partial vaccination rates at the end of June. source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, American facts (As of June 24).
