Sometimes, decisions that shape the world’s economic future are made with great pomp and gain widespread attention. Other times, they are made through a quick, unanimous vote by members of the New Zealand Parliament who were eager to get home for Christmas.

That is what happened 25 years ago this Sunday, when New Zealand became the first country to set a formal target for how much prices should rise each year — zero to 2 percent in its initial action. The practice was so successful in making the high inflation of the 1970s and ’80s a thing of the past that all of the world’s most advanced nations have emulated it in one form or another. A 2 percent inflation target is now the norm across much of the world, having become virtually an economic religion.

A core piece of the Japanese government’s strategy to jolt its economy to life is to do “whatever it takes” to get to that magical 2 percent inflation level. In the United States, the same rationale has driven the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates near zero for six years and to pump nearly $4 trillion into the economy by buying bonds. The European Central Bank appears on the verge of its own huge effort to bring inflation closer to 2 percent.

Yet even as the idea of a 2 percent target has become the orthodoxy, a worrying possibility is becoming clear: What if it’s wrong? What if it is one of the reasons that the global economy has been locked in five years of slow growth?