Beyoncé blamed for extremely high Swedish inflation

Central bankers looking for someone to blame for continuing price pressures have a new target: Beyoncé.

Economists at Danske Bank believe the singer’s decision to start her world tour in Stockholm in May led to a rise in local hotel prices, meaning Swedish inflation exceeded expectations.

Fans from around the world flocked to the Swedish capital for the opening two sold-out concerts of Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour last month, with anecdotal evidence finding many of the 46,000 attending each night outside Sweden’s capital and at exorbitant prices. Had to stay

sweden statistics said on Wednesday The annual core measure, which excludes changes in energy prices, fell just 0.2 percentage points to 8.2 percent between April and the previous month. This was a lower margin than economists and the central bank had expected.

“Beyoncé is responsible for extra surprises this month. This is quite surprising for a single incident. We haven’t seen this before,” said Michael Grahn, chief economist at Danske in Sweden, who estimated the singer caused 0.2 percentage points of the increase.

Statistics Sweden said restaurants and hotels added 0.3 percentage points to the May figure, while entertainment and culture contributed 0.2 percentage points.

Economists said they expected the impact to be smaller this month. But some, like Andreas Wallström, head of forecasting at Swedbank, worried about the next big concert event in Sweden – Bruce Springsteen’s three nights in Gothenburg in late July – having a similar effect.

Beyoncé – famous for hits like “Halo”, “Crazy in Love” as well as “Bills, Bills, Bills” when she was part of Destiny’s Child – is touring for the first time in seven years, fueling huge demand for tickets in Europe. Is increasing and from next month in the U.S.

American websites were flooded Stories from Americans who traveled to Sweden To take advantage of the weaker Swedish krona and significantly cheaper ticket prices than at home.

Tickets for the Stockholm concert were sold with a face value of SKr650–Skr1495 each ($60–140). For her Las Vegas show, Ticketmaster prices Varies from $91 to $689 for standard admission. In other US cities, resale tickets are selling for multiples of that amount.

The Riksbank was one of the last western central banks to start raising interest rates, only moving away from the zero floor in May last year. Its benchmark rate is 3.5 percent and most economists like Grahan expect two more hikes this year as it tries to reduce headline inflation to its target of 2 percent.

The consensus expectation for Swedish core inflation in May was 7.8 percent. The Riksbank has estimated the figure at 8.1 percent.

Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour passed through several European capitals, including five nights in Stockholm, Brussels, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London. She has seven more dates in Germany, the Netherlands and Poland before moving on to Canada and the US. However, its effect is yet to be reflected in the inflation data of any other countries.

Big sporting tournaments often skew economic figures, but economists say it is rare for a single event to do so.