Global Stagflation Shocks: Macroeconomic Challenges and Repercussions

This paper analyses key macroeconomic repercussions of the global pandemic and geo-political crises in terms of growing recessionary and inflationary pressures, and finally, the potential occurrence of stagfla­tion. Primarily, stagflation shocks in the 1970s are analyzed and compared to the current crisis for the period January 2020 – July 2022 in the example of selected economies (the United States, Germany and France). Descrip­tive analysis showed that in the observed period, inflationary and recession­ary pressures existed in USA, Germany and France; however, those pressures could not be identified as stagflation, since they did not happen simultane­ously. Namely, during the pandemic crisis, recessionary pressures were pres­ent, since the GDP growth decreased till the first quarter of 2021 in analyz­ed economies, while inflation rates were stable. On the other hand, with the recovery of economies in the second quarter of 2021 inflationary pressures were stronger, intensified by the geopolitical crisis. Therefore, it seems that the most visible anomaly of the global economic system in 2022 is the pres­ence of inflationary pressures.