Three essays on inflation: a structuralist approach

After several decades of low and stable inflation, Europe experienced a sharp inflationary spike beginning in 2021. The return of inflation sparked renewed debate in Macroeconomics. This dissertation develops a comprehensive theoretical and empirical investigation of the post-pandemic inflationary shock, with a specific focus on the European economy. The contribution to the literature is threefold: first, it shows how current disagreements about the causes, consequences and policy responses to inflation are rooted in an enduring theoretical dispute which can be traced back to the Great Inflation of the 1970s; second, it provides an analysis of the drivers and consequences of the recent inflationary episode across European Union (EU) and Euro Area (EA) countries, accounting for the significant heterogeneity in their economic structures and integration in global value chains; third, and most importantly, it develops an empirical model to investigate how price shocks are transmitted across production networks, using inter-country input-output data to identify the domestic and foreign sectors which are most critical to price stability in EU countries.