In an interview at the “World”, the historian Michel-Pierre Chelini explains that periods of sustainable price increases are first related to international tensions and large wars.
Status collected by
The outbreak of energy prices and raw materials, intensified by the war in Ukraine, woke up, in the West, the painful memories of the 1970s’ stagflation “. However, the game of historical comparisons shows That this episode does not relate to the great inflation periods of the previous century, explains Michel-Pierre Chelini, professor of contemporary history at the University of Artois. Specialist in price developments and wages in Europe and in the world since 1950, he has published in 2021 wages history in France from the 1940s to the 1960s (1944-67), to Péter Lang editions.
From what time, in economic history, does the phenomenon of inflation appear?
We can not really speak inflation only from the beginning of the XX e century, with the multiplication of trade, the massification of the use of the currency and the industrialization of the production. There are only one-century nineteenth century than price increases in a product or category of products determined, limited to a given territory – which does not mean that it does not have importance, especially when it comes to the price of wheat, based on food at the time.
The first great inflation, that is to say the cumulative rise of all the prices over a long period, intervenes only in 1914 and lasts until 1926, with a peak between 1918 and 1922 . The prices, in current francs, are multiplied by seven over the period in France, while they double in the United States and the United Kingdom, and that they are multiplied by 10 15 – either by a billiard – in Germany between 1914 and 1923. The second great inflation in France covers the period 1936-1952, where prices are multiplied by 25. The month of August 1946 is experiencing the highest inflation of the twentieth century: Prices increase by 25%! The third great inflation is the period 1970-1986, with a quadruple of prices and a peak between 1973 and 1983 with the two oil shocks of the Kippur War (1973) and the Iran-Iraq war (1980).
In total, prices in current francs have been multiplied by 2,000 between 1910 and 2010, or if you measure in “new francs” (1960), by 20. but these three episodes of inflation , which cover forty-five years with an annual average of 16%, account for 90% of inflation on the century. They correspond to periods of international tensions and major conflicts, whose consequences have impacted the entire global economy. The fifty-five years without belligerenary are only about 10%, with an annual average of 2%.
You have 73.93% of this article to be read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.