However, in the medium run, the challenge of climate change may lead to a significant improvement in technological progress, which will lead a minima to reduce energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions for a given level of output but could also stimulate productivity growth. This inflationary impact highlighted before would then be offset both by downward pressures on energy prices and by productivity acceleration. *  * *  As we can see from this rapid review of risks factors to inflation in the short to the long run, there is a clear upward bias to risks regarding inflation, which has to be taken into account by economic policy. BIS Review 32/2008  3  It is thus all the more necessary to insure a proper degree of competition on product markets and a well-functioning price system, inducing changes in consumption or production patterns according to the relative scarcity of products. There are large margins of improvement with respect to product market competition both in emerging and advanced countries. In the euro area, the fulfilment of the Lisbon agenda objectives could have a significant offsetting impact. Higher employment rates and acceleration in productivity would lead to both less inflation and higher growth. The low current employment rates of the younger and older workers provide a wide acceleration margin for European growth. The potential catching-up of information technology use in the Euro area would lead to a substantial increase in productivity growth. Both evolutions would significantly reduce the inflation content of growth and help contain inflationary pressures.

» ; J.Coffinet et J.S.Mesonnier, « Anticipations d’inflation du secteur privé et conduite de la politique monétaire »  2  S.Guilloux et E.Kharroubi, « L’impact des prix d’importations sur l’inflation domestique. Le rôle de la structure des échanges ». 2  BIS Review 32/2008  First, a natural process of real appreciation of currencies in catching-up economies is taking place, leading to upward pressures on the prices of their imports. Along with the catching-up in terms of standard of living, the level of prices in emerging countries tends to converge to the level of advanced countries through a combination of appreciating currency and higher inflation. Although somewhat hampered by exchange rate policies in the past decade, it seems to gather speed now with, as an example, the most needed faster appreciation of the Renmibi and at the same time accelerating inflation in China. This process will affect import prices of manufactured goods in developed economies. Second, the growth of emerging market economies and the rise in the living standards of their populations are also leading to a surge in the demand for natural resources, food and energy, which logically has a strong and permanent impact on inflation. Furthermore, by strengthening the magnitude of global shocks in relation to more specifically domestic shocks and favouring the international transmission of the latter, globalisation introduces a much greater synchronisation of inflationary cycles between countries, with the ensuing risks of amplification. Overall, the effects of globalisation have ceased – probably in the long term – to be spontaneously disinflationary.