Capital in the Twenty-First Century

by Thomas Piketty

Between 1913 and 1950, inflation in France exceeded 13 percent per year (so that prices rose by a factor of 100), and inflation in Germany was 17 percent per year (so that prices rose by a factor of more than 300). In Britain and the United States, which suffered less damage and less political destabilization from the two wars, the rate of inflation was significantly lower: barely 3 percent per year in the period 1913–1950. Yet this still means that prices were multiplied by three, following two centuries in which prices had barely moved at all. In all countries the shocks of the period 1914–1945 disrupted the monetary certitudes of the prewar world, not least because the inflationary process unleashed by war has never really ended.