The Exaggerated Death of Inflation

Modern central banking has worked wonders to bring down inflation. Ultimately, however, a central bank’s anti-inflation policies can work only within the context of a macroeconomic and political framework that is consistent with price stability.

CAMBRIDGE – Is the era of high inflation gone forever? In a world of slow growth, high debt, and tremendous distributional pressures, whether inflation is dead or merely dormant is an important question. Yes, massive institutional improvements concerning central banks have created formidable barriers to high inflation. But a significant part of a central bank’s credibility ultimately derives from the broader macroeconomic environment in which it operates.

In the first half of the 1990s, annual inflation averaged 40% in Africa, 230% in Latin America, and 360% in the transition economies of Eastern Europe. And, in the early 1980s, advanced-economy inflation averaged nearly 10%. Today, high inflation seems so remote that many analysts treat it as little more than a theoretical curiosity.

They are wrong to do so. No matter how much central banks may wish to present the level of inflation as a mere technocratic decision, it is ultimately a social choice. And some of the very pressures that helped to contain inflation for the past two decades have been retreating.

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