The Middle East conflict is raising gas and oil prices and this is likely to have an effect on inflation. The scale and the timeframe of the impact will depend very much on how long hostilities last. We contacted our panel of economists to see what effects they consider the war might have on the outlook for inflation, and we also looked at reactions from two other bodies – the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). Below we outline the responses from four of our usual panel, which includes Deutsche Bank, Heteronomics, NatWest Markets and Pantheon Macroeconomics (though not in that order in the text), before coming to the comments from NIESR and the OBR.
