Inflation Governance in the Post-Pandemic Era under Diverging Policy Logics

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a global economic crisis of unprecedented scope, prompting governments worldwide to adopt large-scale fiscal and monetary stimulus measures. While these interventions initially stabilized markets and supported demand, they also laid the groundwork for a new wave of inflation driven by both cyclical and structural forces. This study investigates the complex nature of post-pandemic inflation and examines the theoretical foundations and policy responses that have emerged in its wake. Drawing on monetarism, new Keynesian economics, and modern monetary theory (MMT), the paper argues that inflation in the current era is shaped by an interplay of supply-side shocks, policy legacy effects, and global uncertainties. The analysis highlights the limitations of monetary tightening in addressing structural inflation, the divergence of fiscal strategies across advanced economies, and the growing controversy over macro-policy goals, tool selection, and distributional equity. While policy makers continue to weigh short-term effectiveness against long-term reform imperatives, the study concludes that a flexible, coordinated, and inclusive approach is essential for sustainable inflation governance. Limitations of this study include the lack of quantitative cross-country econometric evaluation, pointing to future research directions involving empirical modeling and deeper institutional analysis.