Historie inflace. I. část - období do poloviny 20. let 20. století

Abstract

There are a variety of definitions of inflation current in economic literature, the differences between them are often associated with implicit theories of cause of inflation. So, inflation occurs when the supply of money grows faster than the total output. Understanding the historical experince of inflation involves explaining the process which gives rise to the fall in the value of money. Inflation is not a new problem. One of the earliest recorded periods of a rapid rise in the price level was in the ancient Greece around 330 BC. To the 1930s there were three periods of relatively rapid price change: a) the period associated with the so-called Price Revolution of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, b) the latter part of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries - particularly the period associated with Napoleonic Wars and c) the period of the First World War and its post-war hyperinflation. Over the whole period for which price records exist, accelerated inflation has been a side-effect of every major war and indeed of every substantial government intervention in economic life.