Consumer prices, annual average · 1980–2025 · IMF · 197 countries
The average annual rise in consumer prices. At 2% a year a price doubles in thirty-five years; at 20%, in under four.
IMF, 1980-2025, 197 countries, annual average of the price index. Each country builds its own basket of goods, which makes fine comparisons debatable even when the method is standardised.
The scale is inevitably crushed by extreme cases: a few four-digit hyperinflations are enough to hide the gap between 1% and 8%, which is precisely the range that drives monetary policy.
Hyperinflation is a political phenomenon before it is a monetary one: Zimbabwe in 2008, Venezuela from 2016, Argentina recurrently for half a century. Conversely, Japan spent nearly twenty years in deflation, an ailment just as hard to cure.