Many marketers question whether 301 redirects pass Pagerank from the old page to the new one. The answer is...yes, 301 redirects do pass the full Pagerank to the new page. Matt Cutts confirms this answer. No longer is there dilution of PageRank with a 301 redirect compared to using a normal hyper link.
Matt Cutts said:
The amount of PageRank that dissipates through a 301 is currently identical to the amount of PageRank that dissipates through a link.