Working Papers present research work by both Danmarks Nationalbank’s employees and our partners. Working Papers are primarily targeted at professionals and people with an interest in central banking research as well as economics and finance in a broader sense.
Consumer Prices in Denmark 1502-2007
The paper presents a consumer price index for Denmark 1502-2007. For the post-1815 period the index is based on existing CPI figures whereas new data has been constructed for the pre-1815 period. For the earliest years 1502-1712 the new CPI covers only the price of corn, whereas the period 1712-1800 is based on the comprehensive price material collected in relation to the recently completed Danish Price History Project. If one define price stability as an inflation rate around 2 per cent per annum, or lower, the past five centuries in Denmark has been dominated by price stability. Disregarding actual war periods there seems only to have been one major exception from the overall picture of price stability: The first four decades following the end of the Second World War where inflation expectations lost their anchor.