The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics Online

The Price Revolution was a unique period of inflation in European economic history, enduring for 130 years, from the early 16th to the mid-17 century. It was fundamentally monetary in origins and character, having commenced with a fivefold increase in silver supplies from the central European mining boom and then sustained and expanded both by a financial revolution in negotiable credit instruments and then by the great influx of silver from the Spanish Americas. The extent of the inflation was, however, influenced by various real factors, especially demographic, which had their greatest impact on the income velocity of money.