Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Robin Winkler
Author-Workplace-Name: Oxford University
Author-Email:robinwinkler@gmail.com
Title: Feast or Famine: The Welfare Impact of Food Price Controls in Nazi Germany
Abstract: How good was the standard of living in pre-war Nazi Germany? Some historians have
argued that household food consumption in the 1930s was at least as high as in the Weimar
Republic, in spite of militarisation. This article provides new evidence against this view by
demonstrating that food price controls significantly distorted consumption patterns. We estimate
that involuntary substitution effects cost average working-class households 7% of their
disposable income. Consumer welfare in Nazi Germany was thus meaningfully lower than
observed consumption levels and prices suggest. Our finding is based on microeconometric
welfare analysis of detailed budget data for 4,376 individual German households surveyed in
1927 and 1937.
Classification-JEL: N14, N34, D12, D52
Keywords: German economic history, National Socialism, household consumption
Length: 37 pages
Creation-Date: 2015-05-05
Number: _136
File-URL: http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/13982/feast-or-famine-rm-winkler-1.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:nuf:esohwp:_136