MAJOR INFLATIONS IN HISTORY

This volume is concerned with periods of very rapid inflation in the period before 1950 and shifts the emphasis from hyperinflation as commonly defined to a wider range of experience. It examines the source and origins of these inflationary episodes, how they started and what measures were used to bring them to an end. The experience of the last twenty years, when the entire world has been on fiat money and inflation has burgeoned, sometimes in excess of 100 per cent per annum, has led economists to reflect on historical examples of this phenomena. The extreme nature of episodes such as the German inflation of the early 1920s ensures that they offer a special kind of evidence on money and prices that is of considerable interest at the present time. Much of the material here is very recent, as relatively little contemporary attention was given to inflations and much of the best scholarship has only appeared in the last twenty years. However, this volume also provides the reader with access to the reflections of contemporary economists, such as Joan Robinson and Gordon Tullock.