Harford om hyperinflation

Harford
Hanke and Krus report 56 episodes of hyperinflation. A 57th, in North Korea in the past few years, is excluded for lack of sound data. Given that the authors were able to scrape together price indices for the Free City of Danzig in 1923 and for the Japanese-occupied Philippines in 1944, the failure to establish facts about present-day North Korea tells you something about Pyongyang’s attitude to statistical outreach. Hanke says that since the paper was released, the hyperinflation club has a new member: Iran.

...with a single exception, every hyperinflation has occurred since the end of the first world war


...history’s worst: Hungary in 1946. Those inflation rates defy comprehension – 41,900,000,000,000,000 per cent a month, compounded, is (I believe) an annual inflation rate with 178 digits. It makes more sense as 207 per cent a day.