Professor He Liping Has his Book in English on the History of World Hyperinflation Published
Time :2017-12-04
Professor Liping He at the Business School has had his book in English, Hyperinflation: A World History, published simultaneously in London and New York from October 2017, by an internationally well-known and dedicated academic publisher, Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group.
The book covers all major episodes of hyperinflation or high inflation in the world since the dawn of the first millennium, focusing on four tidal waves in the 20th century: five nations of Central and Eastern Europe during the early 1920s, several more in Europe and East Asia during and immediately after the Second World War, Latin American and African countries in the 1980s and 1990s, and transitional economies in the early 1990s. Three latest, isolated, incidences in the early 21st century – Zimbabwe in 2008, North Korea in 2009, and Venezuela in 2016-7 – are also examined in depth.
The main conclusion of the book is that hyperinflation has little to do with either a commodity money system or paper currency one. It is primarily a result of severe problems in institution building, policy making, and international relations. Among all economic factors, indexation, expectations, and dollarization are the most important ones.
The book is a new print in the Routledge’ series of China Perspectives, which is launched from 2015 and aims to translate and publish “works by leading Chinese scholars, writing about both global and China-related themes. It covers Humanities and Social Sciences, Education, Media and Psychology, as well as many interdisciplinary themes.” So far the most of the publications in the series are on China-related topics. Selection of the books is based on anonymous review.
Steve H. Hanke, a prominent professor of applied economics and currency expert at Johns Hopkins University who had been advisor to a number of governments in Europe, South America and East Asia from the late 1980s, remarks on the book in his column at Forbes.com recently,

“Professor Liping He from Beijing Normal University has produced a most comprehensive and useful scholarly treatment of world hyperinflation. It is hot off the press. This is a welcomed addition to the literature. Indeed, Hyperinflation: A World History is destined to become a standard reference on the topic. ”

Despite of its high price (£130), the information of the book appeared at amazon.com starts to include its positions in the Amazon Best Sellers Rank from November 2017, which is calculated on basis of a total of books on sale close to or over a million. It has been in the best 100 (occasionally in the best 50) under the section of Inflation, in the best 1,000 0 under the section of Finance, and in the best 3,000 under the section of Economic History. Amazon.co.uk has also shown similar rankings for the book.