This article focuses on a certain divergence between two popularly used measures of price inflation – WPI and CPI – to explain the limited room available to the RBI in cutting interest rates as demanded by many sections of industry. My article seeks to explain that such a divergence is not unusual and in fact normal in an economy driven as much by credit injection through monetary inflation as the economy of today is.
In economic theory, the term Cantillon Effects refers to the asymmetric distortionary effect of inflation (defined in the Classical tradition as an increase in the money supply) on the prices of goods. In simple terms, an increase in money supply does not lead to a uniform rise in the prices of all goods and services. Some prices rise more while some others may rise less, stay stable or even fall in the face of inflation.
Why would there be Cantillon Effects of inflation?
The important point is that money always and everywhere exchanges for particular goods and not for all goods, definitely not for a basket of goods like the ones for WPI and CPI calculations. A good way to understand this is to imagine for a moment that the good Angel Gabriel decides to double the money stock of some good people (while they are asleep) in a certain society. The next morning, this economy sure has greater money supply but the additional money supply is in the hands of particular individuals only.
The additional stock of money immediately influences the value scales of the particular individuals alone to begin with. The marginal unit of money becomes less valued to these people and therefore a certain number of units of particular goods that were earlier considered less valuable than the marginal unit of money may suddenly appear more valuable than the marginal unit of money. So, these people step out and buy these goods. In economic terms, the demand schedules of these buyers have been influenced and their demand curves have been shifted rightward. The demand curves for the particular goods see a rightward shift as well.
However, the value scales of suppliers of these goods do not see any change as nothing has changed for the suppliers. This results in an unchanged supply curve, which, in conjunction with a rightward shifted demand curve, will lead to a higher equilibrium price for the particular goods that these people buy.
In the meantime, demand and supply schedules of other goods remain unaffected and their prices remain unaffected as well. Thus, we see that injecting money into the hands of particular people can raise the prices of some goods while having no influence whatsoever on the prices of other goods. This phenomenon is what we understand in Economics as Cantillon Effects.
The “strange” divergence between WPI and CPI
Let us first remind ourselves that we are right now at the end-stage of a previous round of inflation created by an out-of-control fractional reserve banking system. During any such inflationary period, there will be Cantillon Effects of the inflation. In the early stages of such an inflation, the money injected by the banking system into the production structure will necessarily be spent first on buying factors of production including capital goods, land and labour. This spending works its way through the system of production till it lands in the hands of the owners of land, labour and capital as rent, wages and interest respectively.
Therefore, the immediate effect of the initial inflation is necessarily to raise the prices of producers’ goods, which in turn will cause an index like the WPI to rise while leaving the prices of consumers’ goods relatively unchanged, thus leaving an index like CPI relatively unchanged as well. It is only in the late stages of the inflationary process when the land and labour factor owners and capitalists spend their income on consumers’ goods that their prices and hence CPI go up. At that stage, we may very well witness a rise in CPI being accompanied by a much smaller rise in WPI.
The kind of move that the article cited above speaks of is therefore nothing unusual and is in fact to be expected in an economy driven by inflationary credit expansion by a fractional reserve banking system.
Policy implications
Actually, there are few or no policy implications. Any attempt by the RBI to push money supply up by dropping rates is likely to lead to greater credit expansion through inflationary banking or money injection into the system of production. Therefore, the first effects are once again likely to be on the prices of producers’ goods, i.e., on the WPI. It is only in the future that the effect on consumers’ goods prices will become visible and the CPI goes up again.
Unless the banking system is completely broken and has no avenues into which credit can be injected, it is certainly possible for the banking system to inject newly created money into the production system. There is therefore little to fear and no reason to argue that the RBI has little headroom in tinkering with interest rates, especially once it has, as has every central bank, chosen the path of inflationary banking.
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