The bread of Toledo: Prices and political economy, 1535–1800

We study the market for common white bread in the city of Toledo through a new 266-year-long series of bread prices, obtained from the cash purchases and wholesale bread-for-wheat contracts of large institutions. Our data are strongly consistent with fragmentary evidence on retail price regulation, as well as with shorter series from other regional markets, suggesting they can be considered representative of consumer bread costs for a broad area of New Castile. We show that, in different periods, Toledo’s bread prices were substantially lower than two common series used in the comparative literature. We also explore the role of urban institutions in stabilizing prices. We econometrically demonstrate that Toledo’s wheat price fluctuations were consistent with a 1-year storage cycle, suggesting that urban supply management systems were effective at smoothing the extreme fluctuations in early modern harvest yields. The amount of bread in a respectability basket was generally within reach of urban wage earners up to 1750. Resurgent inflation and the breakdown in regulatory institutions resulted in a marked deterioration in the affordability of bread in the second half of the eighteenth century.