Tyranny of numbers

For the past several weeks, the rapid fall of the rial has been linked to hyperinflation and a possible quick end to the impasse in nuclear negotiations with Iran. Inflation estimates of 196% per year in NYT, 70% per month in Boston Globe, and similar reports in Washington Post and Bloomberg, were all traceable to an article in the Cato website that had prematurely added Iran as the 48th worst case of hyperinflation in the world. Some commentators could hardly hide their joy in the prospect that sanctions were finally, and mercifully, about to spare the Middle East yet another war and the Iranian people years of suffering under sanctions. But these predictions have failed to materialize, and the media interest in the issue has waned. We are slowly hearing the other story of the rial devaluation, its positive effect on local production (see, for example, Jason Rezaian’s informative report in Saturday’s Washington Post).

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I have not been able to write much on this blog because I have been trying to catch up on my research.  But the rial troubles in the last two weeks have been impossible to ignore.  I am not a macro economist, but some of what the media was reporting about the freefall of the rial even I knew was over-sensationalized — hyperinflation, economic collapse… and one Iranian BBC reporter said he had run out of words to describe it!  Yesterday I tried to explain on the lobelog three things. (more…)