URCAD Sneak Peek: Zinedine Partipilo Cornielles

Tue, 11 Apr 2023 22:02:05 -0400

URCAD is tomorrow, 4/12 in the UC!

Two Perspectives to Understanding Post-COVID19 Inflation: A Recovery Phenomenon and a Classical Economic Tradeoff

Location: UC Ballroom | 10 – 11:30 a.m. | Poster 05

Zinedine Partipilo Cornielles
Mentor: Salem Abo-Zaid, Economics

Macroeconomic disruptions tend to cause discrepancies between the expectation provided by economic theories and the actual data. With the economic downturn that started with the COVID pandemic, most, if not all of the world’s economies saw themselves facing a crisis. Unemployment skyrocketed, economic activity floundered, and consumer confidence and demand saw themselves heavily impacted by lockdowns and fears of the pandemic. Because of this, I aimed to study likely causes for the high inflation in what I considered the first “recovery” period, before the start of the war. My strategy was two-pronged. First, I studied the relationship between certain characteristics of countries’ economies and their respective inflation rates. Second, I assessed the presence of an inverse relationship between unemployment and inflation. I then found the following results. First, economies that recovered faster from the demand shocks, had higher inflation. Second, larger economies (with a larger real GDP) also faced higher inflation. Lastly, the relationship between inflation and unemployment that is implied by the simple, short-run Phillips Curve held, which could be another likely explanation for the abnormally large levels of inflation.

Full URCAD schedule: URCAD.umbc.edu