商品价格和货币政策：新旧挑战

Commodity prices and monetary policy:old and new challenges Fernando Avalos, Ryan Banerjee, Matthias Burgert,Boris Hofmann, Cristina Manea and Matthias Rottner 8 January 2025 BIS Bulletins are written by staff members of the Bank for International Settlements, and from time to timeby other economists, and are published by the Bank. The papers are on subjects of topical interest and aretechnical in character. The views expressed in them are those of their authors and not necessarily the viewsof the BIS. The authors are grateful to Adam Cap and Emese Kuruc for excellent analysis and researchassistance, and to Nicola Faessler for administrative support. The editor of the BIS Bulletin series is Hyun Song Shin. This publication is available on the BIS website (www.bis.org). ©Bank for International Settlements 2025. All rights reserved. Brief excerpts may be reproduced ortranslated provided the source is stated. Ryan BanerjeeRyan.Banerjee@bis.org Matthias BurgertMatthias.Burgert@bis.org Fernando AvalosFernando.Avalos@bis.org Cristina ManeaCristina.Manea@bis.org Matthias RottnerMatthias.Rottner@bis.org Boris HofmannBoris.Hofmann@bis.org Commodity prices and monetary policy: old and new challenges Key takeaways •Major price increases in energy and food were key drivers of the 2021–22 inflation surge. These largesupply-driven commodity price increases, occurring when inflation was already elevated in manycountries, increased the risk of moving to a high-inflation regime.•Central banks have tended to look through commodity price fluctuations due to their often transitorynature and the implied trade-off between inflation and output stabilisation in the case of supply-drivenprice shocks.•Growing geopolitical disruptions, climate change and a bumpy transition to green energy threaten tomake commodity price shifts larger and more frequent going forward. This potentially raises greaterrisks for price stability, thereby limiting the scope for monetary policy to look through them. Large and sudden commodity price increases, particularly in energy and food, were key drivers of the2021–22 inflation surge. The prices of food staples, industrial metals and oil soared to their highest levelsin a decade (Graph 1.A). The natural gas price spike was unprecedented, particularly in Europe, with morethan tenfold increases within a few weeks – a jump that even exceeded that of oil in the 1970s (Graph 1.B). While these sharp price increases have largely reversed since 2022, they have left scars in commoditymarkets. Natural gas prices remain significantly above pre-pandemic levels, resulting in spillovers to pricesof other key by-products, such as fertilisers or electricity in some regions. Oil benchmarks have not fullyfallen back either. And persistent dislocations in the trading of physical oil have widened spreads betweenwest- and eastbound crudes (Graph 1.C). The prices of metals, especially the key ones for the greentransition, are considerably higher than before the pandemic. The large surge in commodity prices raised the risk of transitioning to a high-inflation regime, whichwas averted with the most intense and synchronous monetary tightening in decades. Looking ahead,commodity price surges may become larger, more frequent, more persistent and more disruptive, creatingamore challenging environment for monetary policy.Key factors could be growing geopoliticaldisruptions, climate change and decarbonisation. And these could manifest amid a more challengingmacroeconomic landscape characterised by less elastic supply and more pricing power for workers andfirms on the back of deglobalisation. Against this background, this Bulletin revisits the macroeconomiceffects of commodity price fluctuations, assesses the historical reaction patterns of monetary policy anddiscusses the challenges ahead. Sources: World Bank; Bloomberg; LSEG Datastream; national data; BIS. Macroeconomic impact of commodity price fluctuations Commodity price fluctuations can have a major impact on the economy through a variety of channels. Theimpact, in turn, depends on the underlying drivers of the shifts, their size and the structure of the economy.This is what a detailed analysis of the impact of energy and food price shocks for a large group ofeconomies suggests (see online annex A for details). There is a fundamental difference between the effects of demand- vs supply-driven energy and foodprice changes. When price increases are driven by demand, they elevate both headline and core inflation,while also boosting industrial production (Graph 2.A). By contrast, if the increase reflects a contraction inthe supply of the commodities, the effects tend to be stagflationary: they lower output and increaseinflation (Graph 2.B). Large supply-driven commodity price shifts, specifically of energy prices, havedisproportionate and longer-lasting economic effects, in particular on inflation (Graph 2.C). This isprobably because households and firms respond