Econ Nobel Prize Winner: Monetary/fiscal policy at most could have lowered magnitude at inflation, probably at a too high cost of jobs
A simple point emerges from this summary of the experience with inflation in the leading European countries and the Anglo-offshoots: Across countries, the timing of the recent increase in inflation is very similar.
One could argue that with different policies, the US would have had an inflation wave with a smaller amplitude – perhaps more like Switzerland than New Zealand. To make this case, one would also have to argue that an inflation wave with a smaller amplitude would be so valuable that it would justify the slower rate of recovery in the US labor market that it would surely have caused.
Given that the employment rate in the United States for both prime age men and women is still below its peak in 2019, and is falling ever farther behind the rates in other countries, it seems to me that it would be hard to make a convincing case that the US has been trying too hard to get people back to work.