When do we start testing economic balance?

The economy is and always has been inflated in Tarkov so players have the opportunity to bug smash some of the rarer and more expensive gear in the game. It's been stated by Nikita that the economy is intentionally inflated for that purpose. The consequences are that It leads to a very very short (2 weeks) early game period, before you start seeing a sizeable chunk of players with the flea market running high pen ammo and level 5+ armor, "end game" equipment that's supposed to be rare and special when found. The game is a completely different experience at that point.

I understand the need to test new guns / ammo / armor that's been added, and the most efficient way of doing that is to get that gear into as many hands as possible. But if that's the case, why are the dev's also attempting to balance the economy during this abundance as well? We see various flea market changes designed to reduce the amount of money players can make. We continue to see trader sell prices decrease wipe after wipe in order to make loot worth less. We've seen in-raid loot spawns continually decreased in order to nerf the average amount of money that can be made each raid.

This has been a major frustration with me, that we're attempting to test economic balance when the economy is intentionally inflated to test gear. It just doesn't work. The result of this is that every single wipe always turns into the exact same thing about a month in. The majority of players you run into in raid are running guns and ammo that cut through any armor, and wear armor that stops new players low pen bullets. This creates an atmosphere that discourages new players from starting later in a wipe, and seriously changes the way gunfights feel.

Getting the economy balanced to the level that the Dev's want is not going to be an easy task. They ultimately want the game on release to be in a state where it doesn't have to wipe, where starting the game on release day is the same experience for a new player as starting it a year later. This is something that's going to take a lot of time and effort, and most likely a few wipes in beta to get right.