What will central banks do if inflation becomes permanent?
Today, the most likely scenario in OECD countries is that the inflation surge is transitory rather than permanent: there is no sign of an acceleration in labour costs, and commodity prices are starting to fall. But let us assume that wages accelerate in the future and that inflation becomes permanent. What would central banks do then? To combat wage inflation, they would have to raise real interest rates, so nominal interest rates would rise sharply. But this is very unlikely: It would call into question the sustainability of debt; It would prevent the investments required for the energy transition, the nominal return on which is modest, from being made. The most likely is therefore that central banks would barely react to permanent inflation (remember that this is not our scenario) and that they would let real interest rates fall, which would help reduce debt ratios.