Chart created in Python using Altair / data from OECD

Full code & link to data here.

Where is Argentina ?, we have one of the worst inflations of all the world. It didn’t even fit in the graphics right , you would need to use only a unique color for it .

It's a close tie between the Argies and Turkey. Both are in the OECD dataset but I removed them from the chart because it detracts from a meaningful comparison between the other countries. Also, if you try to fit the range of the colour scale to include their values, the rest is just a uniform sea of green. :-)

What is with France and Norway not having harsh inflation? Can anyone explain?

Switzerland numbers looking real sus.

Well, the Swiss Franc appreciated materially against most other currencies (which dampens the impact of inflation), they have the highest share of regulated prices in Europe and a lot of their power is produced from hydropower and nuclear. That all helps.

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10% feels like a low maximum. Inflation is above 20% for the last few months in Hungary.

Correction for max.

If you extend the colour scale range to dark red=20% inflation, most of the chart is just uniformly green.

#1 turkiye 🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🤝🇦🇷🇦🇷💪🏿💪🏿💪🏿💪🏿 diff.

If they have the same currency and free trade, wouldn't they have largely the same inflation? What's the point of having 20 euro countries in the graph, just have eurowide.

I'm not sure green is the best colour to show recession. Maybe go towards a blue?

I can only speculate, but I sure helps Norway that they at the moment is one of the greatest profiteers of the Russian invasion war into Ukraine. They are taking over a lot of the oil and gas sales that previously came from Russia. They are also exporting a lot of electricity to continental Europe (and UK?).

This is not directly the answer

Let me try.

Norway - oil.

France energy exports from nuclear power plants.

Well, that means you need to do something to properly show the numbers, add a new colour further up? Tweek the grading? Both?

The factors you point out definitely have a balancing influence. However, you have different consumption baskets, some countries import more of their energy/oil or goods in general. To your point: the European countries are more homogenous.

These are the countries that OECD tracks. It's interesting to see the differences between say Germany and Frace or outliers like Greece or Switzerland.

Thank you. It’s a nice overview for the past ~ten years but without the whole scale it’s kind of misleading. I understand that you need a broader color range for the representation of the whole inflation range so that the differences in the smaller values are visible but this way it doesn’t represent the true situation for some countries.

Introducing a new colour makes it noisier. In my opinion, adding on a whole rainbow of shades to differentiate 3% of the data (time and country/wise) is not worth it.

You have the link to the code. Feel free to try it out!

Thank you for the feedback! I think it's a trade-off: you really lose out on the details on the rest of the chart that is already predominantly green as it is. Consider this: to go to 20% you would probably not only need to introduce one but two more primary colours (eg. one at 15% and one at 20%).

Negative inflation (also known as deflation) is not exactly good. So it’s wrong to show this in dark great. Implying is the best.

Target inflation should be 1-2% for a consumer economy.

Switzerland, China, Saudi Arabia… what lesson can we learn here… <smirk>

A lot of inflation is being caused by energy costs, which impacts all areas (from direct costs to end users to any services/production etc).

France is something like 80% nuclear, and is (now) fully state owned, and has capped the price of electricity within France, since their costs of production haven't increased. They are forgoing excessive profits at the expense of the French people (but that doesn't mean making losses necessarily), as they are charging more in line with historic levels rather than the general electricity market which is being driven by high gas (as in, natural gas) prices across Europe.

So they have minimal energy inflation which means reduced inflation in all other areas.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/french-power-price-increase-will-remain-capped-4-2022-minister-2022-01-13/

> Target inflation should be 1-2% for a consumer economy.

That's a myth. The industrialized countries had zero inflation in the Victorian era, which was also a period of great economic growth.

Look at Denmark, Estonia and France and then reassess...

Denmark is its own currency but pegged to the Euro.

Yes, it’s a trade off. That’s what I was thinking, too. I just wish inflation would really be in the 10% range.

Zero inflation is neutral (not bad or good) but also hard to walk that line. Deflation (which is bad) is almost inevitable as production becomes more efficient. If you don’t have some inflation there’s no incentive to spend. That incentive is necessary for a consumer driven economy.

France actually imported gas-generated electricity from Germany, as they could not sort out their nuclear power plants.

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/germany/electricity-imports-and-exports/electricity-balance-france

> If you don’t have some inflation there’s no incentive to spend.

You're confusing speculation with spending. The logic consumers use is the opposite of the logic speculators use.

Consumers don't buy something expecting the price to rise. Lower prices mean something we wanted to buy but couldn't afford is now within range. Look at all electronic devices. Are you saying nobody will buy a smart phone because prices will be lower next year?

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Why not zero?

Why is slight deflation so green, mainstream capitalist economics says it's worse than (normal) inflation.

I’m sorry but you clearly don’t understand what causes inflation. All things being equal, putting more money into an economy from oil and gas sales would cause more inflation, not less.

That’s exactly what I’m saying. Necessities and basic staples aside. Why do people rush to buy things if they think the price is going up? Why would anyone buy anything if they think they can get it cheaper tomorrow.

Neither did Sweden but good job on your first ever attempt at geopolitical analysis lil guy!

> Why would anyone buy anything if they think they can get it cheaper tomorrow.

Because they are consumers, not speculators.

If the price goes down, anything looks like a bargain. You see many ads saying "Now 10% off!", lower prices are always a great incentive for buying stuff. An economy with a steady deflation would have a market with continuous discounted prices.

What most people, including many economists, don't understand is that deflation is a result of economic depression. Sellers offer lower prices because they are stuck with a warehouse full of unsold items. There is a correlation between deflation and recession, but deflation is not the cause, it's an effect of recession.

Well, what you are saying is absolutely correct.

To try to go deeper into the matter (only speculations). A great part of Norwegians own their own house/apartment and most of their loans have a “free flowing interest”, so when the Norwegian bank puts up the interest it quickly affects the private economy. Combine this with the extreme rise in the price of electricity (10-12 times up) and the long “tradition” of using electricity for heating to a greater extent than other countries. These two factors contribute to a quick and greatly weakened buying power in the Norwegian population.

Are my speculation onto something plausible?

Brazil thought inflation was so nice they had it twice!

This is true for things like food and energy. But not for durable goods, luxury items, or things like houses and cars.

This isn't the Victorian era. We have stock markets and centralized banks all over the world.

Low positive inflation incentives people to invest their excess cash in business, which promotes growth. Deflation greatly increases the risk of loss to such investments and means that money you stash under your bed will be worth more in a year than it is now, incentiving not spending or investing your excess cash, retarding the economy.

There are many contributing factors to economic growth, but one of the baselines we have to stabilize it in a predictable manner is inflation. By maintaining a low positive inflation, we maintain stable growth.

This is a widely accepted view from financial professionals and is why the fed manipulates interest rates to steer inflation.

Someone who freely admits they are wrong! Online?! I never thought I'd live to see the day. Thank you for the civil discourse. :-D

That's not the reason for why their inflation is so low. Switzerland has backed 95% of the Swiss Franc with Gold reserves. When the Swiss Franc inflates they just trade the Gold for their own currency and buy it off of the global markets. The result is a decreased supply of Swiss Francs in foreign markets. Scarce supply means an increase in value therefore counteracting inflation.

I believe the ECB (and most other countries) have backed their currency by less than 10% which makes it much harder to counter steer inflation.

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India , Brazil, South Africa.

Are you ok?

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Ya, but it's definitely Trudeaus fault

France also has huge agricultural subsidies and produces most of its own farm goods.

It’s pretty easy for deflation to spiral, it’s a positive feedback loop. So it’s better to keep a small buffer to prevent it starting

Might be the worst piece of geopolitical analysis I’ve ever seen

why is there no data on Japan since 2021?

Makes a great case for nationalizing energy production in all countries.

I recommend changing the colourmap; red-green colour-blindness is fairly common (something like 8% of men have it), which would make the figure closer to unreadable. While you're at it, center the colour scale at 0 (instead of 4%) so that the divergence in the colourmap has some meaning (and it's easier to distinguish positive/negative values).

Dang! Joe Biden did all of this!?

2017-2020 is more interesting period to me from this data

France has salaries increasing way slower than other European countries. The government is trying to make it look like the inflation is not hitting France as hard as other countries, but the effect is the same, if not worse, than in countries like Belgium where salaries follow the inflation.

Listen buddy if you want to discuss whether lock down strategies make sense or not you can do that but in the case of Switzerland the by far most relevant factor is the excellent backing of the Swiss Franc.

Energy and Money are quite closely related in that they're a basis for the economy. A century ago we realized that centralizing and nationalizing the source of money was a good thing. It makes some sense to do the same with energy. Particularly energy systems where the infrastructure is not duplicated so that they are natural monopolies. Looking at you electric power grid.

Argentina would be a thin red line...

Do russia and Japan still exist? 🤔

God damn, it looks like some of those developing countries' economies barely got worse during the pandemic. Like Indonesia was almost completely fine and India's inflation rate didn't change at ALL.

God damn, it looks like some of those developing countries' economies barely got worse during the pandemic. Like Indonesia was almost completely fine and India's inflation rate didn't change at ALL.

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> If they have the same currency and free trade, wouldn’t they have largely the same inflation?

You could have just looked at the difference between France and Germany to find out the answer. It’s even more stark if you start looking at others, but I don’t want to confuse you by talking about Latvia.

It makes a great case for nuclear and renewables. Anything to avoid tangling your economy too much to the handful of fossil fuel producing countries.

Must be because it exceeded the range, as the graph only shows within the range of -2% to 10% only. The same was the case with Russia.

Turkey would break this graph

No my barber says Trudeau The Dictator did this. I had no idea he was that powerful.

The heatmap is slightly misleading. Deflation is usually just as undesirable as inflation. In addition the European Central Bank has an inflation target of 2%, which is why the euro countries would have to be rated the "greenest" or most positive at 2% inflation.

South Africa and India seem to always be experiencing inflation pain, while Switzerland doesn’t seem to experience any inflation at all. Why?

Why is there no data for Japan?

Deflation is great, means the money printer can go brr

1-2% because that’s the annual rate of increase in number of consumers. This notion is a direct reflection of population increase, not some argument relating to economics itself.

I came in here to post "I did that!". But it sure looks like the USA is managing pretty well considering all the other countries struggles with it right now.

If Venezuela were on that graph it would be something like this: 🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥⬛️⬛️🟥🟥🟥⬛️🟥🟥⬛️⬛️🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥⬛️⬛️🟥🟥⬛️⬛️⬛️🟥

> This is a widely accepted view from financial professionals

At one time, it was a widely accepted view from scholars that disease was caused by humid air, the word "malaria" means literally "bad airs". Economics is like medicine was before the germ theory, it's still a rather primitive science, it doesn't produce reliable mathematical models.

Think of this, the Federal Reserve system was created in 1913 to prevent financial crises from happening. Less than twenty years later the US would plunge into the worst economic crisis in history. If they know so much, why did they fuck up so badly? How could the Great Depression happen after the creation of the Fed and why didn't it happen before?

never has been

Sweden did print more money than usual during Covid

Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/money-supply-m2

Doctors used to use electroshock to treat schizophrenia.

Dentists used to use arsenic to treat tooth pain.

I guess we better just ignore the composite opinions of every group of professions in today's world /s.

We understand things better after failures. The fed is 5 times older now than it was during the depression. Everyone learns from their mistakes. 1913 was still very early compared to today's largely digital and very accessible stock market.

Yes, it did.

Hungary is also exceeding the range in pretty sure, but it’s just marked in dark red.

How could >leader I don’t like< have singlehandedly caused this inflation

Probably just to make it a continuous scale. It may have been more enlightening to center the color scale at 2.5% or something.

Oh, I just looked it up. Compared to the same month of the previous year, yeah, the last months of 2022 did show more than 20% inflation rate. Perhaps the inflation rate of Japan and Russia were not input so the graph only shows theirs in white. Even zero percent would at least show a color.

That correlation doesn't imply causation

Ok, you can make the argument that economics is a primitive science. But why should I believe you over the general consensus of thousands of economists? Especially when you have provided no argument except “there used to be no inflation, so there should be no inflation now!”

Have you seen the levers and buttons they have at their desks?

In regards to Greece, is -2% too much deflation? I was under the impression that Greece's economy has been pretty rough the last decade or so.

I wish I took Economics.

I agree with op. Those methods would make it more useful for one countries data at the expense of all the other countries data

Python is capable of a red/green/red continuous scale

China's lockdowns are definitely the reason why they don't have a lot of inflation (no one spends money when they are forced to be unemployed even though they are ready, willing and able to work). What I want to know is, what is China's future inflation outlook when it is actively losing people (i.e. there are more people dying than being born). Are they going to experience deflation because the housing market crashes nationwide due to a complete lack of demand, or raging inflation because there will be more jobs available than there are workers as the population falls off a cliff? Given China's racist society, importing large number of immigrants is not going to happen under any circumstances.

Huhhh… laughs in Dutch Farmer

Why does Saudi Arabia's inflation rate change steeply at every new year?

Red/green/red is what you’re after

Ah yes, that is what I meant

feedback, I think that negative value could go to another color, like blue, so we can when and where there was deflation.

With this color grading I am not sure if greece had deflation in 2015 and late 2020, and saudi arabia in late 2018 and early 2019.

This puts in perspective the American Redditors blaming it on the stimuli they received in 2020. It's a much wider problem.

wtf no argentina? red all the way

Thanks for not including Argentina, there's no red enough to represent it.

look this beauty

Why would Joe Biden do this? /s

I am partially red-green colour blind. It's not a binary condition. I a setting like this I have no problem identifying the colours. Centering the colour spectrum on 0 would waste half the spectrum. Negative values are not that common.

Heads: China. Tails: Saudi Arabia. Either way you lose.

idk what inflation Hungary reports towards the OECD though. I know that the official (for this month) inflation rate is sth like 22% but even that is fudged due to price caps and biased selection of what products to consider, I wouldn't be surprised if through some Fidesz math the reported value is closer to 10% (gotta love this godforsaken country)

They blame Trudeau for the inflation in Canada? The same happens to our president in Chile, he has been in office for less than a year but apparently the crisis is his fault.

Brazil started having a huge political crisis in 2012 lasting all the way to 2016.

And Italy

Brazil has been in a political crisis since 1822

Can you provide that graphic with the see of green? No turkey just add Argentina to the current list. If you have the time of course, I'd really appreciate it :)

Hahaah mir sind die beschte. Greetings from switzerland

Excuse me? You clearly didn't attend my family's Thanksgiving dinner or aren't set up to receive my grandparents' emails. Besides, I've seen enough stickers on gas pumps to know this is OBVIOUSLY all Joe Biden's fault

What happened from 2017 to 2020? There seems to be a yellow strip in lots of countries

Switzerland once again shining…

OP was too scared to show Turkey because that'd require a whole new scale.

Yeah, with deflation, it makes you not want to spend money which causes more deflation.

This is great feedback, deflation should have a distinct color as it denotes a completely different situation.

> Doctors used to use electroshock to treat schizophrenia. > > Dentists used to use arsenic to treat tooth pain. >

And economists still use inflation to treat economic recession.

> I guess we better just ignore the composite opinions of every group of professions in today's world /s.

If the professionals use their expertise to create better and better products, then we should listen to them. However, if almost a hundred years after the creation of the Fed we are still facing major economic crises, then it's pretty much obvious to everyone that those guys are still in the arsenic and electroshock state of ignorance.

They do not understand things better if they commit the same mistakes eighty years later.

> you have provided no argument except “there used to be no inflation, so there should be no inflation now!”

Isn't that a good enough argument? They knew how to manage a stable economy, now they have forgotten how to do it. It's like the Dark Ages, the Romans knew how to build aqueducts, but people then lost that technology.

Not only is nuclear state owned, but most renewables (hydro, solar, wind) are also state owned or sold at a fixed price to the state.

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I wish I could see the difference between those colors 😀

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It’s interesting how inflation really ramped up after Biden took office

France is absolutely not 80% nuclear, try half of that.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-2a.html

Wtf is with Saudi Arabia? Inflation magically changes on new years each year

Also the decision to make deflation green very much suggests that its a desired situation, which it absolutely is not.

Since inflation is a measure on the average person, nationalising needed services means that the average person is better off during economic downturns

And to think all this is Biden’s fault.

How ? And also how can Trudeau affect other Countries inflation ?

The Russians are way more responsible for this than Biden. It’s all over the world.

>A lot of inflation is being caused by energy costs

And why is the energy cost suddenly so high? And why concentrated in Europe, at the same time?

Answer: A lot of inflation is being caused by energy costs. Electricity prices have increased across the EU. This is due to a combination of factors, but mostly high natural gas prices. In June, Russia cut deliveries of Natural gas by 75%, causing skyrocketing of energy prices in the EU. Russia did this as a response to the EU and US actions against Russia's attempt to gain control of Ukraine.

Luckily, not everyone loses. Because at the same time the EU stops buying energy from Russia, to cover for the energy loss, now the EU has to buy more energy from the US. It's very good news for the US - billions of dollars of business, while Russia loses billions of dollars.

So the next time are in the store and notice that €10 can now buy only half of the food it could a year ago, you might be angry and sad. But instead, be happy, because it's for a good cause - otherwise Ukraine would again have a regime which is Russia friendly. Unacceptable. We will gladly pay half our food to stop that from happening.

The bad news is, the prices will never come back down, but eventually, in around 10-15 years, the salaries will catch up to the new higher prices.

Idk, being French, this November was the first time ever I got negative on my paycheck before the end of the month, while having a relatively good salary (400€+ than minimum) and not buying any fancy stuff, most of the food I used to buy went +1€ to +3€ in the last two years. +150€ on rental charges. Energy bill went to the roof and the company behind told us they'd start grid power outage tests soon to anticipate for real ones, in which case there is no backup plan atm for emergency calls/services.
If this is what not having harsh inflation is, I have no clue how all these other countries are surviving.

I hope I never have to hear what that sounds like.

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India likes to keep their inflation settings at simmer, occasionally allowing it to boil over.

Pretty funny you capped out inflation at 10%, esp. in cases like my dear country Hungary...

Oh well, maybe it matches the official lies.

Exactly 😄 but a certain side if the political spectrum doesn't use facts to determine their beliefs

Yeah, the "80% nuclear power" figure is only for electricity and dates back from record figures reached back around 2005–2010; nowadays, nuclear power accounts for approximately 69% of France's electricity mix and 41% of the total energy mix as your source states.

Other reasons not mentioned for the lower inflation are that the government has imposed a freeze of natural gas prices until December 31st, 2022, and put in place rebates on gas (petrol) prices from April 1st onwards in order to contain the increase in gas prices: initially 18 cents by litre, then 30, now 10 until December 31st.

Many people like me, who aren't homeowners and use public transport exclusively, have barely been affected so far, only the increases in food prices have been felt by everyone. However all those measures and the increased borrowing rates for government bonds (OAT) are putting a significant strain on public finances and the Government debt.

Yeah, note that the European country with the darkest green is Greece, hardly the epitome of economic health.

Or maybe make deflation a different color, like purple?

When you hold the highest office in the land, every economic crisis is your fault and you get to take credit for every good economic thing that happens. No matter how little you actually had to do with either.

Here I am in Canada holding $8 head of lettuce expecting like solid deep red line or something for Canada only to find out we're doing pretty good.

So do you guys gotta take a loan for your lettuce?

They were expensive to begin with?

The scale ends at 10%. Poland has inflation of about 18%, and that (at least) should be the end of the scale.

I'm pretty sure that if more countries had oil deposits like USA , inflation would be lower there too

What happened by the start of 2017? Looks like whole EU jumped up.

the industrialized countries of Victorian era also had colonies and puppet banana republics they exploited to ensure great economic growth and zero inflation

safe to say that the global situation isn't the same anymore and the economic policies of then aren't applicable now

India:- GDP growth rate:- 7% , inflation:- 6.8%

UK:-GDP growth rate:- recession, inflation:-11%

USA:-GDP growth rate:- recession, inflation:-8%

so yes , India is doing ok given the global situation

Switzerland:-be a tax haven for the scum of the world ,which ensures large money(dollars/gold) inflows, which ensures the local currency appreciates in value, that lowers inflation.

Saudi Arabia:-be part of a oil cartel to profiteer from low global oil supply compared to global demand, which ensures large money(dollars) inflows, which ensures the local currency appreciates in value, that lowers inflation ,

and also buy discount Russian oil for domestic consumption and sell your own oil at market prices to others.

China:-lockdown entire cites when a single covid case is found and welding people's doors closed, and significantly eliminate the demand side factors that cause inflation but destroy your GDP growth rate in the process too

and also buy cheap Russian gas and oil.

i don't think there's much that can be learnt from these 3 nations without a lot side effects.

don't know about south africa but , in India the target inflation range is 2-6% which is what the inflation is most of the time

the reason for the range upper limit being so high is that its not a problem when the GDP growth rate is also high

as for Switzerland, https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/zhqabn/oc_inflation_heatmap_for_44_european_other_dm_and/izr0qam?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3

oil prices

don't know about Indonesia but , in India the target inflation range is 2-6% which is what the inflation is most of the time

the reason for the range upper limit being so high is that its not a problem when the GDP growth rate is also high

there's 4 types of economies:-developed,developing,Japan and Argentina

moderate inflation ain't a problem if GDP growth rate is high enough

oil prices started to rise

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i laughed at Russia being in the emerging markets section

I feel like Romania is missing from a lot of statistical charts related to Europe

Absolutely nuts

What you say is correct, however if you look at the BRICS countries graphs they seem cyclical. India doesn’t seem to follow any pattern.

Also, let’s ignore China for the time being. High growth rate + low inflation is only possible in an iron-clad regime. 😊

m8 , china ain't got high growth rate right now

At first I thought this was a GitHub commit map and I was in awe then I realised the actual content.

Use a log scale.

Yeah, you use a log scale with negative values 🤪

If you offset your zero point then you can still use a log scale.

I thought the issues with EU bailing out and major financial troubles a few years back would have had a major impact on the likes of Greece.

Definitely not. Japan has been seeing inflation. Not too bad, but basically anything imported has gone up 30-40%. There is absolutely more inflation now in Japan than there has been in the past 30 years.

China growth rate they have been growing decently over the period of the visualisation

China absolutely killing it, as per usual.