pred-2026-03-25-099
The US February 2026 core PCE price index (year-over-year) will print at or above 2.6% when released on March 28, 2026
- created
- 2026-03-25
- resolves
- 2026-04-10
- resolved
- 2026-04-10
- outcome
- 1
- brier
- 0.1444
- base rate
- 0.55
- meta-confidence
- medium
Tradition weights
- keynesian0.28
- marxist0.25
- institutionalist0.24
- austrian0.23
Evidence for (7)
- Services inflation structural stickiness: shelter lease cycles, healthcare administered pricing, and tuition-setting provide a persistent floor at or above 2.5% in core PCE independent of new shocks
- Tariff-embedded import costs already institutionally incorporated into producer price schedules through 2025 renegotiation cycles — a prior-round commitment adding structural upward pressure
- Post-Keynesian markup pricing: firms pass import and logistics cost escalation through to goods prices as markups, operating independently of demand conditions
- Oligopolistic administered pricing in energy, logistics, and retail sectors protects margins by externalizing Hormuz-related input cost increases to consumers rather than absorbing them
- Austrian capital structure fragility from prior credit-expansion malinvestment amplifies energy-cost pass-through into core goods categories
- 6-8 week supply-chain pass-through lag from Hormuz escalation onset aligns plausibly with February measurement window for partial goods-price diffusion
- Cross-framework convergence: all four frameworks independently predict ≥2.6%, a signal of structural robustness rather than framework-specific artifact
Evidence against (6)
- Hormuz pass-through may not have cleared institutional repricing thresholds — long-term contracts and inventory buffers create a 6-12 week lag that may push full diffusion beyond the February reference period
- Demand-side moderation: bearish animal spirits, rising liquidity preference, and simultaneous private retrenchment suppress demand-pull components, potentially offsetting cost-push partially within the measurement window
- Dollar strength imports deflation in tradable goods categories and could partially offset Hormuz pass-through in manufactured goods
- Entrepreneurial hedging and nearshoring adjustments may have attenuated energy cost pass-through more than structural models predict
- BEA seasonal adjustment methodology can suppress or amplify February prints independent of underlying price dynamics
- If the acute Hormuz disruption phase concentrated in late 2025, February may show a plateau rather than a new inflection in core goods prices
Reasoning chain
All four frameworks independently converge on a ≥2.6% call but with divergent primary mechanisms. The Keynesian and Marxist frameworks emphasize cost-push markup pricing and administered pricing power as the primary channel, with 6-8 week lag sufficient to embed Hormuz costs in February data. The institutionalist framework provides the critical qualification: Hormuz pass-through may not be the marginal driver — pre-existing services inflation stickiness and tariff-embedded import costs already institutionally incorporated constitute the structural floor. The Austrian framework adds a malinvestment substrate amplifying the pass-through. Synthesizing: the ≥2.6% print is more likely to reflect institutional inertia (services + tariffs) than new Hormuz pass-through, but both channels are additive rather than alternative. The primary uncertainty is not direction but whether the institutional floor sits at 2.55% or 2.65% — tight enough that demand-side moderation from animal spirits deterioration could suppress the print to 2.5-2.59%, falsifying the claim. Base rate of 0.55 (pre-shock probability of ≥2.6% given structural trajectory) is adjusted upward to 0.62 for: cross-framework directional convergence, tariff cost embeddings already in the institutional pipeline, services inflation structural persistence, and partial Hormuz goods-price diffusion as upside tail.
Philosophical basis
Post-Keynesian markup pricing theory provides the primary mechanism — cost-push independent of demand conditions. Institutionalist path dependence explains why services inflation provides a persistent floor via lease cycles and administered healthcare pricing. Marxist administered pricing explains why oligopolistic sectors externalize input costs rather than absorbing them as margin compression. Austrian capital structure theory explains the amplifying substrate from prior credit expansion that makes the capital structure more fragile to supply disruptions than prior cycles. The frameworks are complementary rather than competing on the binary directional question; they disagree primarily on whether Hormuz constitutes the marginal driver or merely reinforces a pre-existing institutional floor.
Falsification criteria
The prediction is falsified if the BEA's March 28, 2026 release shows February 2026 core PCE year-over-year at 2.59% or below
Sources
- 183-operationalization-unionization-trickster-terms-derivatives.md — derivative relation: operationalized demands generate second-order structures whose optimization diverges from original demand; PCE methodology carries embedded choices that suppress measured inflation relative to material deterioration, meaning a 2.6% print understates working-class price experience
- 184-evidence-improvisation-integral-priming-broadcast.md — integral deficit: the PCE release is one of the few signals aggregating dispersed microeconomic price-adjustment processes; central banks lack real-time integrative capacity to distinguish cost-push from demand-pull, creating structural lags in policy response
- 185-resilience-schema-procedural-occupation-diagnosis.md — resilience schema: the Fed's inflation-credibility architecture occupies the diagnostic space where structural analysis of pricing power would occur, converting a distributional question about who absorbs supply-shock costs into a monetary credibility question
Brier breakdown
Post-mortem
Auto-resolved (confirmed, confidence=0.97). Evidence: The BEA released the February 2026 Personal Income and Outlays report on April 9, 2026 (delayed from the originally scheduled March 28, 2026 date due to a government shutdown). February 2026 core PCE year-over-year came in at 3.0%, down slightly from January's 3.1% but well above the 2.6% threshold in the prediction. The month-over-month print was +0.4%. Sources: https://www.bea.gov/news/2026/personal-income-and-outlays-february-2026; https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2026-04/pi0226.pdf; https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/february-2026-pce-inflation. Reasoning: The falsification criteria requires the February 2026 core PCE YoY to print at 2.59% or below for the prediction to be falsified. The actual print was 3.0% YoY — a full 40+ basis points above the 2.6% threshold. The release was delayed by approximately 12 days (from March 28 to April 9) due to a government shutdown, but the underlying data value unambiguously satisfies the prediction's claim of 'at or above 2.6%'. The prediction is confirmed.