She can sing. She can dance. She can cause unexpectedly high inflation in Sweden.
The kick-off of superstar Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour in Stockholm last month may have contributed to a spike in that country’s May inflation rate, according to an analysis by an economist at Danske Bank.
The findings were posted Wednesday on social media by Michael Grahn, chief economist for Sweden at the major European retail bank. The Scandinavian country reported higher-than-expected inflation of 9.7% in May.
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Grahn calculated that Beyoncé’s much-hyped concert likely accounted for about 0.2 of the 0.3 percentage points added to inflation by hotels and restaurant prices in Sweden’s capital as fans flocked to her concert.
Ticket platform SeatGeek says that the average price for Beyoncé concert tickets is about $1,000, but you can find them for as low as $150. Select seats can cost up to $5,000. In May, online users in Sweden appeared to say that the average ticket for her Stockholm show was on sale for about $200.
Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour could gross between $275 million and $2.4 billion from tickets alone by the time it ends in September, according to estimates published by Forbes magazine.
Global inflation has been falling in recent months.
The U.S. consumer price index, which measures changes in a multitude of goods and services, increased just 0.1% in May, bringing the annual level down to 4% from 4.9% in April.
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But it remains stubbornly high overall around the world. On Thursday the European Central Bank raised its key interest rate by a quarter percentage point, to 3.5%, as it tries to fight persistently high inflation.
Sweden Statistics, the nation’s official statistics agency, said that the 9.7% inflation rate in May was down from 10.5% in April, as energy and food prices declined, but it still leaves Sweden with a 12-month annual rate of 6.7%.
Grahn, the economist, said he expects the “upside surprise” to Sweden’s May inflation − the Beyoncé effect − “to be reversed in June as prices on hotels and tickets reverse back to normal.”
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