Home / Library / New World Silver Inflated Prices in Spain

Notable Quote

"We see by experience that in France, where money is scarcer than in Spain, bread, wine, cloth, and labour are worth much less. And even in Spain, before the discovery of the Indies, goods and labour were much cheaper than they are today, for the reason that there was then much less money."

— Azpilcueta, Martín de event 1556

From Comentario Resolutorio de Cambios (Commentary on Exchange)

Context: Empirical evidence for the quantity theory of money. Comentario Resolutorio de Cambios (1556). Azpilcueta directly connected the influx of silver from the Americas to the price revolution of the 16th century — one of the first empirical observations in monetary economics.

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