Ideas of Inflation

With Ideas of Inflation, the Freigeist Research Group Geopolitics in the Age of Offshore Finance at Freie Universität Berlin, together with the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) and Dezernat Zukunft, hosted a five-part talk series between December 2022 and July 2023 that explored inflation as a deeply political and contested economic phenomenon.

The series brought together leading scholars including Leah Downey, Helen Thompson, Juan Flores Zendejas, Isabella Weber, and Jens van ’t Klooster to discuss inflation from multiple disciplinary perspectives.

The series set out to challenge dominant narratives that frame inflation primarily as a technical issue of monetary policy. Instead, it examined how inflation is shaped by political decisions, institutional arrangements, and broader transformations such as financialization, energy transitions, and geopolitical tensions.

Across five conversations—on democracy, energy, history, China, and central banking—the series created a space to revisit what we think we know about inflation, to question established assumptions, and to reflect on the limits of existing economic models.

As part of the broader Ideas of … format, the series aimed to slow down fast-moving policy debates and open up room for deeper reflection. Bringing together academics, policymakers, and journalists, it fostered an exchange that moved beyond immediate reactions and engaged more fundamentally with the ideas shaping economic thinking and political decision-making.

The series has since been continued with Ideas of Energy, which shifts the focus to the political economy of energy.