Central bankers are rethinking their approach to economic forecasting after their high-profile failures to spot the most recent inflationary outburst, as officials argue for greater candour with the markets about the uncertainties they are confronting.
The European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and other official forecasters failed to see how the end of Covid-19 lockdowns and an energy shock triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine could pave the way for the worst inflationary spiral in a generation.
After responding with aggressive rate rises, central banks have engaged in intensive postmortems as they unpack the reasons for their failure.