Shipping Prices and Import Price Inflation

Maggie Isaacson and Hannah Rubinton

Review, 2023, vol. 105, issue 2, 89-107

Abstract: During the pandemic, there have been unprecedented increases in the cost of shipping goods accompanied by delays and backlogs at the ports. At the same time, import price inflation has reached levels unseen since the early 1980s. This has led many to speculate that the two trends are linked. In this article, we use new data on the price of shipping goods between countries to analyze the extent to which increases in the price of shipping can account for the rise in U.S. import price inflation. We find that the pass-through of shipping costs is small. Nevertheless, because the rise in shipping prices has been so extreme, it can account for between 3.60 and 5.87 percentage points per year of the increase in import price inflation during the post-pandemic period.

Keywords: COVID-19; shipping prices; imports; inflation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E31 F14 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedlrv:95616

DOI: 10.20955/r.105.89-107

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