Summary

State and local economic conditions and policies lead to deviations in inflation from the national average. For example, if local housing supply is relatively inelastic, then monetary or fiscal expansions translate more into local price increases than into quantities increases, generating more inflation in housing rents than in otherwise similar locations with more elastic supply.

This report documents that across various measures of inflation, aggregation, and political categorization, liberal states as well as cities inside liberal states have observed higher inflation rates in the past year than their conservative counterparts.