Die SPD war von 1930 bis 1932 nicht an der Regierung beteiligt, tolerierte aber die Spar- und Deflationspolitik des Kabinetts Brüning. Diese Tolerierung suggeriert, dass die SPD die Regierung Brüning gegen ihre wirtschaftspolitischen Überzeugungen unterstützt hätte, um Demokratie und...

Unexpected inflation can redistribute wealth from creditors to debtors. In the presence of financing frictions, such redistribution can impact the allocation of real activity. We use the German inflation of 1919-1923 to study how a large inflationary shock is transmitted to the real economy via...

Guinnane and Hoffman (subsequently GH) comment on two of our papers: Voigtländer and Voth: “Persecution Perpetuated” (2012, subsequently PP) and Satyanath, Voigtländer and Voth: Bowling for Fascism (2017, subsequently BF). They allege that our econometric results are fragile and depend on...

Why do public policies change little over time in individual places, sometimes for centuries? We investigate different mechanisms for policy persistence. Several city mayors serving in democratic Weimar Germany were expelled by the Nazis in 1933, but re-installed by the Allies after World War...

Vor 100 Jahren mündete die Große Inflation, die bereits 1914 mit dem Ersten Weltkrieg ihren Anfang nahm, in der Hyperinflation von 1923. Bis heute herrscht in der deutschen Bevölkerung und Politik eine Inflationsaversion. Anlässlich dieses Jubiläums und der zuletzt stark gestiegenen...

The article treats the history of Germany's Great Inflation from 1914 to 1923. It focusses on explaining the turning points of wholesale price trends. It demonstrates that these were mostly triggered by national and international political decisions immediately impacting the mark exchange rate....

Germany's hyperinflation resulted from a confluence of several factors, all of which contributed to a temporary breakdown in state capacity and to unsustainable public sector deficits. Wartime debt deflated by 90% already in 1920. Informal wage indexation and failure to enforce collection of a...