Disinflation has stalled: implications for the second half
The IMF has revised 2026 global inflation up three times running, from 3.8 to 4.4 to 4.7 percent. Three revisions in one direction is a signal about the model, not the shock.
Quantitative economics research and advisory
Quantitative evidence for high-stakes economic decisions
Quantia provides strategy, investment and policy teams with independent economic research, continuous market monitoring and reusable quantitative models. Every conclusion is traced to published institutional data and documented end to end, so it can be examined, reproduced and defended.
Ten reports · Four quantitative models · Three continuously updated market monitors
10Research reports across four coverage areas
4Quantitative models, run directly in the browser
3Market monitors, rebuilt on each data release
55Published exhibits, each attributed to source
Analysis is built on published institutional data, including the IMF, OECD, IEA, WTO, FAO, UN-Habitat, USDA and the EIA. Review the source policy
Market conditions
Two forces are shaping the 2026 outlook
An energy supply disruption is raising headline prices while a technology investment cycle supports measured activity. The two do not offset. They affect different economies, different households and different components of the price index, and the distinction determines where exposure actually sits.
3.0%
World output growth projected for 2026, against a 3.5 percent average across 2024 and 2025
Revised down 0.1pp since April$725bn
Combined 2026 capital expenditure guided by the four largest hyperscalers, up approximately 77 percent
Guidance raised twice this year269m
Global housing unit deficit in 2023, against 201 million in 2010 on UN-Habitat estimates
Widening across all income groupsSources: IMF World Economic Outlook Update, July 2026; company guidance compiled by the Financial Times capital expenditure tally, April 2026; UN-Habitat, World Cities Report 2026.
Every projection is published with its dispersion
Method
Analysis that can be reproduced and audited
A figure is only useful if the person relying on it can identify its source, its exclusions and its margin of error. Our deliverables are structured to make all three available without further enquiry.
- Projection intervals derived from the forecaster's own historical error record
- Model parameters exposed as controls rather than embedded in the calculation
- Forecast vintages retained and scored against outturn
- A source register on every report, naming the issuing body and the vintage
Capabilities
How we support decision-making
Engagements fall into three categories. Larger programmes combine all three, in sequence.
MeasurementIndex construction and data infrastructure
We build the series a decision requires when no published source provides it: bespoke price indices, capacity trackers and panel-weighted survey aggregates, documented so they can be maintained independently.
EstimationElasticities, passthrough and incidence
Demand systems, cost passthrough, tariff incidence and labour supply response, reported with the identification strategy and the confidence interval alongside the estimate.
EvaluationScenario design and forecast assessment
Scenarios built around the variables that carry the variance, and published projections scored against outturn so clients can see which assumptions are doing the work.
Products
Reusable quantitative models
Four models covering sovereign debt, housing affordability, inflation passthrough and the industrial metals cycle. Each runs in the browser, exposes every parameter, and is designed for repeated use as assumptions change rather than delivered as a fixed result.
Debt Sustainability Model
Project a public debt ratio forward from an interest rate, a growth rate and a primary balance, decompose what is moving it, and read off the fiscal adjustment required to stabilise. Includes a rate stress path.
Housing Affordability and Capacity Model
Turn a price, an income and a mortgage rate into a payment burden, an affordability-implied price and the gap between the two. The rate sensitivity curve prices what each 100 basis points does to buying power.
Energy Passthrough Model
Push an energy price shock through three channels running on different lags and watch what reaches headline and core inflation quarter by quarter. The second-round setting is what separates a temporary shock from a persistent one.
Industrial Metals Cycle Indicator
Six drivers, weighted and direction-corrected, resolve into a level and a momentum reading that place the complex in one of four cycle phases. A separate structural score tests whether an upswing is cyclical or a supercycle.
Market monitors
Continuous coverage of the indicators that matter
Each monitor tracks the series that carry most of the information in its domain, and is rebuilt when its underlying publications update. Every panel names the release it draws on.
Global Macro Monitor
Twelve series tracking the world economy through an energy shock and a technology-led investment boom. Rebuilt on each major forecast release.
Housing Affordability Monitor
Cross-country affordability, the 269 million unit shortfall, and the collapse in public housing capital spending that sits behind it.
Compute and Power Monitor
The buildout tracked from capital commitment through to grid load, household bills and the share of measured GDP growth it accounts for.
World consumer price inflation
QD-01Annual percent change. Bands show the 30, 60 and 90 percent projection intervals implied by the dispersion of historical forecast error at each horizon.
Central path: IMF World Economic Outlook Update, July 2026. Interval widths estimated by Quantia from historical forecast errors, 2000 to 2024.
Current view
Forecasts published with their uncertainty
Global headline inflation has been revised upward in three consecutive rounds while core projections were left broadly unchanged. That combination indicates mechanical passthrough rather than propagation, and it is the distinction on which the 2027 path depends.
Research
Reports
Ten studies across four coverage areas: housing and land; food systems and agricultural productivity; compute, power and industrial capacity; and trade, energy prices and inflation. Each begins from a measurement question rather than a forecast.
Tariffs After the Ruling
A court decision struck down one layer of a four-layer schedule. We rebuild the stack and explain why merchandise trade volumes still slow sharply this year.
The Quantity Gap
The global housing deficit widened from 201 million units in 2010 to 269 million in 2023, through the cheapest decade of credit on record. This is the quantity evidence QR-02 said was needed.
The Passthrough Problem
Brent moved from 61 to above 100 dollars inside a quarter. We model the passthrough into headline and core inflation and set out what would have to break for second-round effects to appear.
Insights
Analyst commentary
Shorter notes published close to events and retained in the archive so prior positions remain available for review.
Macro
Data centre load has become a consumer price issue
US residential electricity prices rose roughly twice as fast in 2025 as in prior years, and faster still in early 2026. The data centre link is no longer speculative.
Reconstructing the tariff schedule after the February ruling
The February decision removed one layer of a four-layer schedule. Importers who modelled a single average rate are now discovering how much the composition mattered.
Assessing the transmission of the March oil shock
Brent went from 71 dollars on 27 February to above 100 within a fortnight. The interesting question is not the level. It is how much of it reaches core inflation, and how quickly.