Hyperinflation in the Łódź Ghetto
Authors: Joshua Blustein, Jonah Bennett, Natalia Stefanska, Przemysław Galach, and Steve H. Hanke
Series: Studies in Applied Economics, No. 222
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise, Baltimore
Date: December 2022
An archival study that documents a previously unrecorded hyperinflation episode inside the Łódź Ghetto, the second-largest ghetto established by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland. The German administration forced ghetto residents to surrender legal tender in exchange for a scrip, the so-called Mark quittance or Chaimki, which circulated only within the ghetto's closed economy and could not be used to buy goods outside it. Working from ghetto records, price data, and survivor accounts recovered in Polish and Jewish archives, the authors reconstruct the ghetto's money supply and price level and show that the scrip's purchasing power collapsed as the German authorities issued it without limit against a shrinking supply of food and goods. The resulting episode qualifies as a hyperinflation under the standard 50-percent-per-month threshold, and the paper adds it to the historical record of hyperinflations catalogued at the Institute.
Full Citation:
Blustein, Joshua, Jonah Bennett, Natalia Stefanska, Przemysław Galach, and Steve H. Hanke. "Hyperinflation in the Łódź Ghetto." Studies in Applied Economics, No. 222. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise, December 2022.
Co-authors: Joshua Blustein, Jonah Bennett, Natalia Stefanska, and Przemysław Galach
Note: A later journal version, "A Note on the Łódź Ghetto Hyperinflation," appeared in World Economics (2025) and is catalogued separately in this list.