Which country will be last to escape inflation?

In January prices across the rich world rose by 5.7% year on year, down from a peak in late 2022 of 10.7%. This conceals wide variation, however. Some countries have slain the inflation beast. Others are still in the fight of their lives.

To get a view of the various battlefields, we have updated our measure of “inflation entrenchment” for ten rich countries. The measure comprises five indicators: core inflation, unit labour costs, “inflation dispersion”, inflation expectations and Google-search behaviour. We rank each country on each indicator, then combine the rankings in order to form an overall score.