Does authority via traffic get passed on to a forwarded domain?

[laserclinics]

We have purchased a keyword rich domain name as well as a short domain name(the acronym of the company). I would like to only advertise the short version and have a 301 redirect to the longer version. If we get a lot of traffic to the short version is that credit/authority passed on to the domain we are forwarding to?

[TomRayner]

Any benefit works on the assumption that traffic is an influencing factor for search results.  Everything that I remember reading has told me that this is not the case - traffic is pretty much solely a by-product of increased rankings and not the reverse.

Should I be wrong or should that change in the future, I think it's safe to assume that any 301 redirect would pass on most of the benefit.

For the record, I think a shortened URL for advertising reasons (particularly in press) is a solid idea.