On Venezuela's Death Spiral

With the collapse of a currency comes inflation. By the time President Nicolás Maduro arrived, inflation was in triple digits and rising. With the acceleration of inflation, the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV) became an unreliable source of inflation data. Indeed, from December 2014 until January 2016, the BCV did not report inflation statistics. To remedy this problem, the Johns Hopkins-Cato Institute Troubled Currencies Project, which I direct, began to measure inflation in 2013. More…