Inflation and the Stock Market
This paper discusses a crucial cause of the failure of share prices to rise during a decade of substantial inflation. Indeed, the share value per dollar of pretax earnings actually fell from 10.82 in 1967 to 6.65 in 1976. The analysis here indicates that this inverse relation between higher inflation and lower share prices during the past decade was not due to chance or to other unrelated economic events. On the contrary, an important adverse effect of increased inflation on share prices results from basic features of the current U.S. tax laws, particularly historic cost depreciation and the taxation of nominal capital gains.
Published Versions
Feldstein, Martin. "Inflation and the Stock Market." The American Economic Review, Vol. 70, No. 5, (December 1980), pp. 839-847. citation courtesy of
Inflation and the Stock Market, Martin Feldstein. in Inflation, Tax Rules, and Capital Formation, Feldstein. 1983