Taylor Swift performs onstage during the Taylor Swift | The Erasu Tour at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland on June 28, 2024. © Getty Images / Charles McQuillan/TAS24 / Contributor
The pop star's 18-city European tour, which kicked off in May, is driving up prices. Taylor Swift performs onstage during the Taylor Swift | The Eraser Tour at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland on June 28, 2024. © Getty Images/Charles McQuillan/TAS24/Contributor
European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde said that pop superstar Taylor Swift's European tour is not the only factor keeping inflation across the euro zone high, CNBC reported on Tuesday.
The singer's 18-city European tour, “Eras Tour,” which began in May, has sold out, and some experts say it will have a major economic impact on cities in the 20 eurozone countries.
“It's not just about Taylor Swift,” Lagarde told CNBC in response to a question about whether Swift's tour had boosted services inflation across the euro zone.
Services inflation, one of the measures closely watched by the European Central Bank, remained steady at 4.1% in June in the euro zone. Core inflation, which excludes energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, rose 2.9% month-on-month, slightly below the consensus forecast of 2.8%.
Meanwhile, headline inflation fell to 2.5 percent in June from 2.6 percent the previous month, in line with expectations in a Reuters survey of economists.
“The services sector is difficult,” Lagarde said, adding that the “jury is still out” on whether the rigidity is permanent.
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There has been much discussion recently about the economic impact that Swift's tours will have on the global economy, as prices rise as consumers splurge on concerts, dining out, vacations, and other entertainment activities — an effect that has been dubbed “Swiftflation” or even “Swiftonomics.”
Natalia Rechmanova, chief economist at the MasterCard Economics Institute, told Forbes earlier this year that Swift's European tour this summer will have an “even bigger economic impact” compared to her 2023 U.S. tour.
Experts cited by CNBC pointed to the overall increase in consumer spending associated with major music tours, including those by artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Pink and Sting, as stimulating the economy, while others said the impact is difficult to measure and that central banks should not pay too much attention to the impact of such one-off events. (RT)
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