All About Inflation

I was comfortably reading my morning newspaper which was ablaze with rising inflation figures when I was bowled a googly from my smarter-than-his-age nephew. He wanted to know what inflation is. Now you will say what’s the big deal dude- anyone can tell that. Well, one of the problems is he’s just a kid, and the bigger problem is he’s not satisfied with one line answers. He wants “complete coverage”.

I won’t go into the details about how I finally answered him to his satisfaction. The bottom line is, this session with my nephew led me to write the following posts, which I’ll present before you in the coming days, one by one. If you are (with due respect) not an expert on the topic, please go through the posts, I hope you’ll find them informative and enlightening. If you are an expert, I’ll request you to still go through the posts and give your insights so as to help (again with due respect) the not-so-expert-on-the-topic.

Here is the agenda of this session on inflation.

Post 1: What is inflation & types of inflation

Here we’ll try to understand inflation in simple terms; starting from the scratch and building on it. Believe me, there is no prerequisite for this. I’ll try to present the concept minus the jargon so that anyone and everyone can understand it.

Post 2: Index of Inflation

Having understood the meaning of inflation, it is now time to see what are the various indexes employed by different countries to measure inflation, reason for adopting that particular index and pros and cons of one index over the other. 

Post 3: Calculating Inflation Rate

This will be an interesting post because here you will learn the actual process of arriving at the figures that you see every week in newspapers. Again I’ll try to present every concept in a simple way, but in case of any question feel free to contact me either through comment box provided at the end of the post or through the contact page.

Post 4: Consequences & Control of Inflation

Is inflation always bad? If not in what ways is it a boon? What are the other consequences of inflation- let’s call it side effects of inflation. This post will deal with these aspects of inflation and we’ll also look ways of keeping inflation in check both at the high level and at ground level.

Post 5: Trivia related to inflation 

Having covered the tough portion it’s now time to relax and go through these interesting facts about inflation.

If you are still reading this I’ll thank you for your patience, and without testing it further, I present the posts to you.