| Kommentar |
After 30 years of absence, in 2022 inflation suddenly reappeared Western countries. Nearly 100 years have passed since the first largest inflationary episode in modern history, the 1923 hyperinflation in Weimar, nonetheless, our understanding of inflation dynamics is still debatable. The course, therefore, aims to offer a historical and methodological perspective on the study of inflation by comparing the present situation with the most important inflationary episodes of the 20th century, primarily from a European/North American perspective but also including case studies from Africa and Latin America.
The first part of the course will focus on the different theories that have been formulated to explain the increase in prices, both in economics (quantity theory of money, Keynes’s monetary theory, rational expectations) and in political science (political theory of money).
The second part of the course will make use of the theoretical framework discussed in the first part to analyse case studies (also by relying on students’ presentations). Topics will include inflation during the two world wars, the 1920s hyperinflation, Bretton Woods and the international monetary system, inflation in the 1970s, the Great Moderation in the 1980s and 1990s, the European monetary system, the consequences of austerity in the EU after 2011, and cryptocurrencies. The final goal of the course is to develop an interpretative framework for inflation that accounts for the specificity of the historical context. |
| Literatur |
Battilossi, Stefano, Youssef Cassis, and Kazuhiko Yago, Handbook of the History of Money and Currency (Singapore: Springer, 2020)
Bernanke, Ben S., The Great Moderation: Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke at the meetings of the Eastern Economic Association, Washington, DC (2004) <https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2004/20040220/default.htm>
Chélini, Michel-Pierre, Calmer les prix: L'inflation en Europe dans les années 1970 = Slowing down prices European inflation in the 1970s (Paris: SciencesPo les Presses, 2016)
Eich, Stefan, and Adam Tooze, ‘The Great Inflation’, in Vorgeschichte der Gegenwart: Dimensionen des Strukturbruchs nach dem Boom, ed. by Thomas Schlemmer, Lutz Raphael and Anselm Doering-Manteuffel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), pp. 173–96
Eich, Stefan, The Currency of Politics: The Political Theory of Money from Aristotle to Keynes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022)
Eichengreen, Barry J., Golden fetters: The gold standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939 (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)
Feldman, Gerald D., The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German inflation, 1914-1924 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)
Maier, Charles S., ‘Inflation and Stagnation as Politics and History’, in The Politics of Inflation and Economic Stagnation: Theoretical Approaches and International Case Studies, ed. by Leon N. Lindberg and Charles S. Maier (Washington, DC: Brookings institution, 1985), pp. 3–24 |
