The escalation of conflict in the Middle East caused a spike in commodity prices that quickly fed into higher global inflation. A recent moderation in commodity prices has caused some subsequent easing in consumer price inflation in many economies. These dynamics are well captured by high-frequency daily price indicators using web-scraping software.
By Patrice Ollivaud and Ben Westmore, OECD Economics Department
The June OECD Economic Outlook highlighted that disruptions to shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, along with damage to energy and other infrastructure, crimped the global supply of key commodities. Prices of the affected commodities – both energy and non-energy – ratcheted upwards in response. Gas prices in Asia were 64% higher on average in May than in February 2026. Brent oil prices rose by 50% over the same period. The price of various other commodities also rose, with sulphur, urea and phosphate prices increasing by 67%, 33% and 20% respectively. The rise in commodity prices has since partially unwound following the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran to end the war in the Middle East.
The war-induced increase in commodity prices was transmitted to consumer price inflation around the world, evident in monthly official consumer price indexes. A key question is whether complementary higher-frequency indicators can give a more timely read on how both the steep increase and recent unwinding of global commodity prices translate into movements in consumer price inflation.
One such measure is the daily price index developed by Cavallo and Rigobon (2016) and available for a sizeable number of advanced and emerging-market economies. To construct these measures, web-scraping software is used to collect daily prices across millions of products mostly from major retailers with a physical as well as online presence. Price changes are then aggregated across items using official CPI weights in each country. The daily price indexes may provide an early signal before official CPI releases, allow policymakers to distinguish temporary shocks from more persistent inflation, and help assess in close to real-time the extent to which commodity shocks are being transmitted through supply chains to other consumption items.
Aggregating across 27 countries that account for around two thirds of world GDP, the daily price index shows a steep and persistent rise in consumer prices between 27 February and early May 2026, with a similar trajectory to that observed in the early period of the inflation spike in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (Figure 1). This pattern was broadly based across both advanced and emerging-market economies, with the percentage change in the daily price index over March and April significantly higher than the average during the same period across 2010-25.
Based on the monthly weighted average of the daily price indexes, year-on-year global inflation increased from 3.5% in February to 5.0% in April, with the advanced economy aggregate rising from 3.1% to 4.6% and the emerging-market economy aggregate rising from 4.7% to 6.0%. Nonetheless, with a subsequent stabilisation and then moderation of global commodity prices, daily consumer inflation plateaued in May and fell slightly in June, contrasting with the 2022 episode when consumer price inflation continued to move higher.
The increase in inflation in the daily measure from late February largely stemmed from the direct impact of rising fuel prices (Figure 2, Panel A). Globally, the fuel price spike from the daily measure through March and April was even more pronounced than in 2022. However, since late May, daily fuel price inflation has fallen notably. In contrast, there were no signs of increased food inflation following the escalation of conflict, despite the indirect impact of higher energy and fertiliser costs on agricultural producers. Global daily food price increases so far this year have even been slightly more moderate than the average increase over the 2010-25 period (Figure 2, Panel B).
Do the daily consumer price indicators track fluctuations in official measures of consumer price inflation?
The daily price measures miss some of the price movements of consumer items not typically observed online, such as certain services like education and most spending on healthcare. Nonetheless, observed correlations between year-on-year percentage changes in the daily price measure and official measures of headline consumer price inflation are generally high. For those countries with at least 10 years of daily price measure history, the correlation coefficient ranges from +0.54 in Germany to +0.98 in Turkey (Figure 3, Panel A). The reasons for different correlation coefficients across countries warrants further investigation, but it is generally not those countries with a high share of online purchases in total retail sales that display the highest correlation. Granger causality tests across the countries with at least 10 years of daily price data suggest that the daily price indexes can provide an early signal of future official consumer price inflation developments.
Monthly averages of the daily price data highlight the increase in consumer price inflation in many countries between February and May 2026 (Figure 3, Panel B). Based on this measure, inflation increased by 0.9 percentage points in the median economy. The increase was even larger for several of the major economies, including the United States (2.3 percentage points), Italy (2.5 percentage points) and South Africa (3.5 percentage points).
Inflation moderated in June based on the daily price indexes, reflecting the easing in global commodity prices. In several European countries, including Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands, year-on-year inflation in June was back below the average rate observed in February 2026 (based on monthly averages of the daily price index; Figure 3, Panel B). The extent to which inflation moderates further partly depends on the durability of the recent memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran. Given the still-uncertain geopolitical landscape and above target inflation in many economies, monitoring the daily price indexes can be a useful complement to official monthly and quarterly inflation measures. In particular, the daily price data can be a useful real-time tool for policymakers to assess the degree that commodity shocks are feeding through to consumer prices and whether those pressures are proving temporary or persistent.
Figure 3. A moderation in daily price inflation suggests weaker official inflation for June in many economies
References
Cavallo, A., and R. Rigobon (2016), “The Billion Prices Project: using online prices for measurement and research”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 30, No. 2.
OECD (2026), OECD Economic Outlook, Volume 2026 Issue 1: Under Pressure, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/2d1956f0-en.
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