Meaning

The word inflation has at least four meanings.

• A persistent rise in the general level of prices, or alternatively a persistent falls in the value of money.

• Any increase in the quantity of money, however small can be regarded as inflationary.

• Inflation can also be regarded to refer to a situation where the volume of purchasing power is persistently running ahead of the output of goods and services, so that there is a continuous tendency of prices - both of commodities and factors of production - to rise because the supply of goods and services and factors of production fails to keep pace with demand for them. This type of inflation can, therefore, be described as persistent/creeping inflation.

• Finally inflation can also mean runaway inflation or hyper-inflation or galloping inflation where a persistent inflation gets out of control and the value of money declines rapidly to a tiny fraction of its former value and eventually to almost nothing, so that a new currency has to be adopted.