This book presents a comprehensive study of the most famous and spectacular instance of inflation in modern industrial society--that in Germany during and following World War I. A broad, probing narrative, this book studies inflation as a strategy of social pacification and economic reconstruction and as a mechanism for escaping domestic and international indebtedness. The Great Disorder is a study of German society under the tension of inflation and hyperinflation, and it explores the ways in which Germany's hyperinflation and stabilization were linked to the Great Depression and the rise of National Socialism. This wide-ranging study sets German inflation within the broader issues of maintaining economic stability, social peace, and democracy and thus contributes to the general history of the twentieth century and has important implications for existing and emerging market economies facing the temptation or reality of inflation.

This book examines the causes of very high inflation--and of the great drop in statistically measured output--in the post-Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union. It focuses on several key topics: the fundamental nature of the shift from supply-constrained economies (in which there is no unemployment) to ones that are constrained by demand; the reconstruction of monetary and credit systems; and the central role of macroeconomic stabilization and generalized liberalization in creating the basis for private sector growth. Many of the chapters herein have grown out of policy debates in which the author participated.