The Death of High Inflation
I did a quick calculation using the IMFs World Economic Outlook Database, which runs back to 1980. Year by year, how many countries had triple digit inflation in any given year? It looks like this:
Basically, there was a wave of hyperinflations caused by the chaos following the breakup of the Soviet Empire, much like the wave after World War I; since then, Zimbabwe and nobody else.
Even double-digit inflation has become quite rare:
Theres a brief spike around 2008; if you look at it, it turns out to be mainly small commodity-exporting countries pushed into big devaluations by the crisis, leading to one-time jumps in consumer prices. But then it was back to the downward trend.
There are, I think, a couple of morals here. One is that economics textbooks probably talk too much about high inflation; its a nice pedagogical set-piece, but not something thats a real issue in todays world. Another is that
high inflation doesnt happen just because a countrys rulers are spendthrifts or dont know about the Emperor Diocletian or something; it is always associated with severe political and social disruption. To stand Milton Friedman on his head, high inflation is never and nowhere a merely monetary phenomenon.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/the-death-of-high-inflation/