Talk:Price revolution

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I don't think you did disagree, David -- just vastly improved an extended stub! Since I'm not thrilled by economic history, I certainly don't mind someone much more interested doing the revising -- hope it wasn't all that awful, though. I just wanted to contribute something new, and this was off the top of my head. JHK
 * It was just the downplaying of the urbanisation aspect I was thinking about - it is a fascinating topic: I'll add a bit on geopolitical impacts (including English erm... appropriation of Spanish booty) later when I've formed a better idea of the related economic implications. DP
 * I'd like to note that we are experiencing a rather strange price revolution with the vast decreases in prices of many industrial goods . The relative price of of things not easily or

appropriately mass produced eg law, education, etc is causing some strange and perhaps dangerous imbalances. Oth the ease of production of wealth has created a surplus of labour which may be deployed for bizarre and largely unproductive ends.
 * Marx wrote in Capital, with great eloquence and dispair, on the enclosure of the commons, the primitive formation of capital, the birth of the proletariate etc. The enclosure ( as a verb ) relates to privatization and changes in the established nature of title.


 * Further there are those who attribute the collapse of the Roman Empire to the slow loss of specie to luxury imports and backbreaking imperial taxes to maintain bread and circus's for the dispossed ( by competion with patrician owned slave farms subsequent to the Punic victory ) Italians over several hundred years and a concominant price revolution. Thus the rise of fuedalism, the 'fascist' version of 'christianity' etc.


 * There doesn't seem to be an article on the enclosure movement.


 * Thanks for the article. Wblakesx

more people = higher prices?!

 * Demographic factors also contributed fundamentally to upward pressure on prices, with the revival (from around the third quarter of the 15th century) of European population growth after the century of depopulation and demographic stagnation that had followed the Black Death.

I think that sentence is a bit confusing. A priori, and certainly fundamentally, population growth does not contribute to higher prices. In fact, since the currencies we're talking about here were silver-based (fractional-reserve banking not having been introduced) and had a slow and probably nearly constant circulation velocity, you'd expect deflation, in the absence of new silver (which is excluded from the discussion in that paragraph).

In this case, there are certainly other factors that have to be included: settlement structures limited the available arable land;  adjusting the economy to a larger population might have resulted in extra cost. However, I would think it's impossible to discern those comparatively minor factors after all those years, most data having been lost.

I'll remove "fundamentally" now, but I'm not sure I'm smart enough to salvage anything from the rest of the paragraph.

RandomP 23:27, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

this really has been debunked, that is the spanish importation of american bullion and the burgeoning population, to be attributed to the price revolution. the revoluiton according to jack goldstone, was fuled by the increase in the velocity of market transactions, therefore inflating price: p=mv/t where p=goods at sale price,m=stock of money, v= velocity of circulation, and t= the volume of goods sold. the bullion was traded from lima through the nw to asia, india and china, or hoarded by and large. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.210.90.37 (talk) 17:53, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

MV=PY. When population goes up Y goes up (though less than one for one, by diminishing returns). Assuming velocity doesn't change, and money stock remains constant, higher population will lead to LOWER prices. Now. An increase in population MIGHT change the RELATIVE price of food (vis a vis other commodities) but that 1) is not guaranteed, and 2) is not what is meant by "inflation". Volunteer Marek 05:31, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

But Goldstone's story of the change in V should be included in the article (though AFAIK, it's PART of the story). Volunteer Marek 05:36, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Capitalisation?
Shouldn't this be titled the "Price Revolution" in capitals as e.g. in Hughes' Early Modern Germany? It surely is a proper name. --Bermicourt (talk) 18:50, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Merge in information from AfC
An WP:AfC has been written called European Price Revolution. I suggest merging the information from that article into this one, rather than creating a separate article? Jonpatterns (talk) 09:57, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Merge information from European Price Revolution and Spanish Price Revolution proposal
I propose that European Price Revolution be merged into this article Price revolution. I think that the content in the former article is about largely the same topic.Jonpatterns (talk) 18:22, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Ditto on Spanish Price Revolution


 * SUPPORT the merge. The articles are clear content forks.  N2e (talk) 21:41, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Support - yes, it's all the same topic ("Spanish Price Revolution" is a bit WP:OR too).Volunteer Marek (talk) 22:58, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

I've done the shorter easier merge of European Price Revolution and Price Revolution Jonpatterns (talk) 15:44, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Makes sense, but maybe change the title, the 'Spanish Price Revolution' is slightly misleading, as the influx of goods effected all of Europe's economy. Mention in the first few sentences the inflation was due largely to the Spanish, but refer to it simply as the Price Revolution. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.31.36.235 (talk) 03:07, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Support - I do think we should change the name to encompass all of Europe as it was a European price change, but it is virtually all the same series of events — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ethangibson4 (talk • contribs) 14:00, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

So what?
The article doesn't really explain why the "price revolution" is interesting or important or worth having an article about. OK, so prices increased more than they had previously been increasing. . . so what?

Was it historically important in some way &mdash; for example, did it affect people in some way, or have important consequences? Or is it important primarily because of something that economists have learned from it? Or something else?

Were people aware of it at the time, or is it something recognized only in retrospect?

What makes it a "revolution"?

—Ruakh TALK 02:35, 21 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I see that the article has now been expanded to address this. Thanks! —Ruakh TALK 03:58, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

"Three bankruptcies"...
...seems to be missing two. Spain suffered defaults on sovereign debts in 1557, 1560, 1569, 1575, and 1596. — Llywelyn II   09:43, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

"Generally", "most historians"
This article contains quite a lot of inappropriate generalizations. The subject especially with respect to its causes is rather controversially debated, which is not really illustrated here. Danx de Mais (talk) 13:10, 3 December 2022 (UTC)