Editing Inflation (section)

=== Medieval age and "price revolution" in Western Europe===

There is no reliable evidence of inflation in Europe for the thousand years that followed the fall of the Roman Empire, but from the [[Middle Ages]] onwards reliable data do exist. Mostly, the medieval inflation episodes were modest, and there was a tendency that inflationary periods were followed by deflationary periods.<ref name=parkin/>

From the second half of the 15th century to the first half of the 17th, Western Europe experienced a major inflationary cycle referred to as the "[[price revolution]]",<ref>[[Earl J. Hamilton]], ''American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501–1650'' Harvard Economic Studies, p. 43 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: [[Harvard University Press]], 1934).</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/ecipa/archive/UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-99-02.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090306002320/http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/ecipa/archive/UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-99-02.pdf |url-status=dead |title=John Munro: ''The Monetary Origins of the 'Price Revolution':South Germany Silver Mining, Merchant Banking, and Venetian Commerce, 1470–1540'', Toronto 2003|archive-date=March 6, 2009}}</ref> with prices on average rising perhaps sixfold over 150 years. This is often attributed to the influx of gold and silver from the [[New World]] into [[Habsburg Spain]],<ref>{{cite book |author=Walton |first=Timothy R. |title=The Spanish Treasure Fleets |publisher=Pineapple Press |year=1994 |isbn=1-56164-049-2 |location=Florida, US |page=85 |language=en-us}}</ref> with wider availability of [[Silver coin|silver]] in previously [[Great Bullion Famine|cash-starved Europe]] causing widespread inflation.<ref>{{Cite journal|url=https://ideas.repec.org/p/bsl/wpaper/2007-12.html|title=The Price Revolution in the 16th Century: Empirical Results from a Structural Vectorautoregression Model|first1=Peter|last1=Bernholz|first2=Peter|last2=Kugler|journal=Working Papers|date=August 1, 2007|via=ideas.repec.org|access-date=March 31, 2015|archive-date=April 25, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210425223334/https://ideas.repec.org/p/bsl/wpaper/2007-12.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Tracy, James D. |title=Handbook of European History 1400–1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation |publisher=Brill Academic Publishers |location=Boston |year= 1994|page=655 |isbn=90-04-09762-7}}</ref> European population rebound from the [[Black Death]] began before the arrival of New World metal, and may have begun a process of inflation that New World silver compounded later in the 16th century.<ref>{{cite book |author=Fischer |first=David Hackett |title=The Great Wave |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1996 |isbn=0-19-512121-X |page=81 |language=en-uk}}</ref>