Food crises in Germany, 1500-1871

Abstract

This study is the first to establish a chronology of food crises in Germany from the sixteenth century to their disappearance in the late 1860s based on a standard methodology to detect cycles in commodity prices. To this end, we develop an aggregate rye price series, deflate it by a consumer price index and decompose this real price in trend and cyclical components using the Butterworth filter. Years are classified as food price crisis when the cyclical component exceeds the trend component by 20 percent or more. Using this methodology, we identify 24 food crises between the 1540s and 1871. Additional information from other research is employed to assess the demographic consequences of food price crises. Viewing the latter from an aggregate perspective suggests four distinct regimes of food crises driven by climate change and economic forces.