Same Shock, Different Roads? A K‑Shaped Pattern at the Pump
Rajashri Chakrabarti, Thu Pham, Beck Pierce, and Maxim Pinkovskiy
In March 2026, energy prices surged to a four-year high, driven by the Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. In this Liberty Street Economics post, we use the new consumer spending module of the Economic Heterogeneity Indicators to analyze recent changes in nominal and real gas consumption across different income groups. We find that households had very different experiences with gasoline spending: in March, high-income households increased nominal