Description:
Opposite Trends : Movements of Prices in Eighteenth Century Potosi. The records of expenses of the Franciscan convent of Potosi allow us to observe the movement of prices for about forty products from the end of the seventeenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth. These series reveal the overlapping of several trends (maritime, South-American, regional, and local) which correspond to different economies whose currents converge in the Potosi market. Each of these economies presents autonomous traits, but together they demonstrate a clear tendency towards depression, especially in the second half of the eighteenth century. Study of the tithes of the La Plata Archbishopric suggests a correlation between a thirty year downward movement of grain and tuber prices (1760-1790) and a period of agricultural growth, this last being correlated as well with a demographic surge