Beyoncé allows Swedish inflation to soar

The craziness surrounding May’s opening ceremony of Beyoncé’s global Renaissance tour in Stockholm has pushed up inflation in Sweden, economist Michael Grahn says.

“Basically, all the hotels within 60 kilometers of Stockholm were full of her fans,” Grahn told The Wall Street Journal. According to him, inflation in Sweden increased by 0.2 percent in May because of the Beyoncé concert.

So experts are curious what the outcome of another big act on the Swedish economy will be: Later this month, Bruce Springsteen will perform three times in Gothenburg.

The “blip”, as Grahn calls it, may have been small, but it came in a month when Swedish inflation was already high. Economists had expected inflation to fall to around 9.2 percent in May, but inflation ended up at 9.7 percent.

According to The Financial Times on Wednesday, the Swedish Statistics Agency announced that hotels and restaurants contributed 0.3 percentage points to inflation and entertainment and 0.2 percentage points to culture.

Grann told The Financial Times, “Beyonce is solely responsible for the astonishingly additional growth last month.” “It’s pretty amazing for an event. We’ve never seen anything like this before.”

In addition to paying for an overnight stay around her shows, Beyoncé’s fans have been known to do a lot for merchandising as well. Forbes estimates that she will earn a total of around $2.1 billion from her world tour.

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