Democracy protects nations from hyperinflation

The research was conducted by Steve Hanke and Nicholas Krus, two economic researchers working at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, and published last month by the Cato Institute, a think tank based in Washington DC. They document all known cases of hyperinflation in history, coming up with 57 cases in all, measuring the start date, the end date, the peak month, as well as the peak inflation rate.While much of the 19-page paper is dedicated to footnotes, sources and the authors describing how difficult it was for them to get the data and how long it took (three years), the three-page data table they produce at the end offers some extraordinary insights.For instance, of the 57 cases of hyperinflation, only three took place in democracies, and two of those instances were those of Germany after its defeat in World War I. The third was Peru, which saw a brief three-month period of hyperinflation.