Rugby World Cup: Will England's early exit weigh down inflation?

England's elimination from the Rugby World cup might drag down inflation, a leading economist has said. Howard Archer, one of the UK's most prominent economists, said in a weekend email that, as merchandise will be heavily

"England losing in the rugby may be good for keeping inflation down," Archer said. "[There] will be lots of England rugby shirts suddenly available at half price or less. I wonder whether the Bank of England will look through that temporary downward impact on inflation!"

On 13 October, the Office for National statistics will publish the Consumer Price Inflation for the year to September 2014 and the City is fearing that inflation will turn negative again.

Although strongly discounted merchandise might weigh down prices of clothing, which were already weak in August, the October inflation rate is unlikely to be too heavily impacted by the early exit of the English rugby team.

When England's national football team was eliminated from the Fifa World Cup in June 2014, both June and July inflation rates were relatively high, so the theory does not always apply.

In addition, the World Cup is expected to add a total of £982m to the UK GDP, with a total output of £2.2bn. Almost half a million foreign visitors are attending the World Cup in England, which means overall demand of goods and services sold in the UK will increase.

Despite the fact that macroeconomic data suggests that the UK is recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, inflation has been hovering around the 0% level, far from the Bank of England's target of 2%.

On Thursday, the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee is announcing whether it is hiking the interest rates, lifting it off from the record low of 0.5%.