War, Oil and Inflation, Thumbing Through Some Rules of Thumb, CIBC

March 18, 2026

Economists were sent scrambling to adjust their inflation forecasts for the outbreak of war in the Middle East, familiar territory given that region’s powder-keg history. The first step entails thumbing through some rules of thumb, or in economist’s lingo, elasticities, that capture what models have to say about how a given oil price shock flows through into the CPI. But adjusting those historical norms to present circumstances has its challenges.

Read more in the detailed REPORT HERE by Avery Shenfeld.

Avery Shenfeld is Managing Director and Chief Economist of CIBC Capital Markets. He has been with CIBC since 1993 and is widely recognized as one of Canada’s leading economists for his perceptive analysis and insight on economic developments and their implications for financial markets.

He is a repeat winner of the Dow Jones Market Watch forecasting award and has received awards for forecast accuracy on the U.S. and Canadian economies by Bloomberg Markets. He has also been consistently ranked as one of the top Canadian economists by institutional investors.

His prior background includes experience in management consulting. He was on the economics faculty at the University of Toronto and in the summer program at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He has addressed numerous business groups and has been quoted in the media in the United States, Canada, Asia and Europe.

Dr. Shenfeld holds a PhD in Economics from Harvard University.

SOURCE, CIBC

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