Riksbank Deputy Governor Henry Ohlsson in this speech discusses inflation in Sweden in 4 wars: WWI, WWII, Korean War in 1960s and Middle East War in 1970s.
Inflation rose in all the four wars but overall outcomes etc were different:
“When major and unusual events such as the war in Ukraine occur, there is no ‘manual’ for how to act as an economic policy decision-maker. All wars are different – in terms of their scale and duration, their location and their impact on the world around them.”
This is how Henry Ohlsson began his speech at Uppsala University, where he described what research literature has to say about the connection between war and inflation. He also looked back at earlier episodes of war being associated with rising inflation in Sweden.
He highlighted four episodes: the First World War, the Second World War and the Korean War, and, starting in the mid-70s, a more prolonged episode of war in the Middle East. The first three wars were marked by a more short-term inflation, while inflation became more persistently high during the latter period, largely because economic policy became too expansionary.
What about inflation today:
Henry Ohlsson said that Sweden now has better conditions for coping with the balancing act that rising inflation entails for monetary policy, compared with when inflation began to rise in the 1970s. He highlighted three factors behind this: the inflation target, the wage-formation model and the fact that today there is a more robust fiscal policy framework in place.
So what can we learn from history with regard to our current situation? asked Mr Ohlsson. During many of the periods of high inflation in connection with war, the effects of monetary policy have been heavily dependent on the expectations of companies and households regarding future economic developments.
“The price increases we have seen in recent months are not something that monetary policy can affect. But the high inflation risks setting off a spiral of price increases, wage drift, price increases, wage drift and so on. It is essential to ward off these tendencies in time. It was therefore time to change the direction of monetary policy and start raising the repo rate” concluded Mr Ohlsson.
Ohlsson also discusses this interesting economic history episode in Sweden related to Eli Heckscher. The eminent economist of Heckscher-Ohline mode caused a run on the central bank in 1920s:
An interesting, but perhaps not so well-known, event during this period was that Eli Heckscher, professor at the Stockholm School of Economics and internationally renowned economist, actually caused a bank run at the Riksbank in 1920. Although the inflation peak had passed, inflation at the beginning of 1920 was still so high that Heckscher thought that the Riksbank should raise the discount rate significantly. When the Riksbank did not want to do this, Heckscher decided to do something about it.
The right to exchange notes for gold had ceased in connection with the outbreak of the war in 1914, but was reintroduced in 1916. However, since an export ban on gold had been introduced in 1914, this did not mean in practice that the gold standard had been re-established. The export ban allowed the gold price to differ between countries and the value of the krona to change against other currencies. This was also the case as the krona depreciated against the dollar.
At the US Federal Reserve, the price of one kilogram of gold in the depreciated Swedish currency was SEK 3,600 at the beginning of 1920. At the Riksbank, the price of one kilo of gold was instead SEK 2,480. If the export ban were to be lifted, then a considerable arbitrage gain could be made.
Heckscher decided to draw the general public’s attention to this fact and did so through an article entitled “The new price revolution” (Den nya prisrevolutionen), published in the daily newspaper Stockholms Dagblad on 11 March 1920. The article was more or less an explicit encouragement to readers to withdraw their money from the bank and go to the Riksbank to redeem it for gold: “Anyone who brings SEK 1,000 in banknotes to the Riksbank has the legal right to receive 50 SEK 20 [gold coins] and these currently have a value of SEK 1,450 – 45%
profit on the most risk-free of investments”
The final results were indeed an onslaught of people who wanted to redeem their banknotes at the Riksbank, who were therefore forced to raise the discount rate in order to defend the gold reserve. In connection with this, the Riksbank requested release from the obligation to redeem banknotes for gold, which was subsequently also granted.
Hmm..