Emerging-market central-bank experiments risk reigniting inflation

When prices began to rise unusually quickly two years ago, one group was fastest to react: emerging-market central bankers. They realised inflation had arrived for the long haul well before their peers in rich countries, and kept raising interest rates as prices soared. In policymaking environments as difficult as Brazil and Russia officials have resisted pressure from politicians to cut rates. This follows two decades in which emerging-market central bankers pulled off the impressive feat of bringing down inflation in places where it had seemed intractable. The whole period has been a triumph not just for the officials involved, but for the economists who insisted on the need for independent central banks in emerging economies—and for them to focus on keeping prices stable, just like policymakers in rich countries.