T21Finance · History
When economies collapse
Some countries saw their prices multiply by hundreds in a single year and their savings vanish. Open a country card to read its story in charts, then visit the hall of fame of the wildest inflation records since 1970.
1The stories
One story per country, written from open data. More countries are added one by one.
2Hall of fame of hyperinflation
The highest one-year inflation records since 1970, one per country, and what they have in common.
2.1Record inflation in one year, % (log scale)
2.2The printing press
2.3Debt
2.4The record
A pattern, not a law: wars, the end of the Soviet Union or the fall of a single export price also played their part. Counts use only the records for which the World Bank publishes the figure.
3Sources
- Inflation: World Bank, A Global Database of Inflation ↗ (Ha, Kose and Ohnsorge, 2023, “One-Stop Source: A Global Database of Inflation”, Journal of International Money and Finance), licence CC BY 4.0; annual average consumer price inflation.
- Output per person, growth, money supply, fuel exports, foreign debt: World Bank, World Development Indicators ↗, licence CC BY 4.0.
- Data collected on . Flags drawn for Dark Majestic.