Riesgo de deflación en EE.UU.: ¿Un temor justificado?

After the 2001 deceleration of economic activity, the growth of US economy has since been below its potential and inflation has decreased to its historical minimum. This has brought about the fear that the American economy could be suffering from an extended episode of deflation, similar that experienced by Japanese economy from the nineteen-nineties with high costs in terms of added production and unemployment. Taking into account the Japanese experience, this work tries to determine up to what point the existing risk factors justify the fear of deflation in the USA from a macroeconomic optic. With this purpose the author analyses the inflation projections carried out with various forecast instruments, the effect of gains in productivity on the inflation rate, the degree of excessive capacity in the US economy, the evolution of asset prices and, finally, the role of economic policies, both monetary and fiscal. By and large, the results show that deflation is somewhat improbable in the American economy.