ABSTRACT
Research into the history of prices has provided a basis from which we can follow the long-term movements of cereal prices in England, France, northern Italy, Germany and Austria from the thirteenth or fourteenth century up to the present day, and compare them with each other. If the figures are converted to a common system of weights and coinage and plotted as trinomial ten-year moving averages, as in figure 1, they reveal the following three secular trends:
an upward movement during the thirteenth and, to some extent, the early fourteenth century is followed by a downward curve in the late Middle Ages,
another upsurge in the sixteenth century comes to a halt in the seventeenth century,
a third upward trend during the eighteenth century breaks up during the nineteenth century into short-term and sometimes contrasting movements that converge only at the end of the nineteenth century and in the twentieth century. 1
