Zusammenfassung:
This paper studies the role of global factors in causing common movements in consumer price inflation, with particular focus on the food, housing and energy sub-indices. It uses a comprehensive dataset of 223 countries and territories collected from national and international sources. Global factors explain a large share of the variance of national inflation rates for advanced countries - and more generally those with greater GDP per capita, financial development and central bank transparency - but not for middle and low income countries. Common factors explain a large share of the variance in food and energy prices.