Price scissors

The price scissors is an economic phenomenon when for a certain group or sector of productive population, the overall valuation from their production for sale outside this group drops below the valuation of the demand of this group for goods produced outside the group after a period of reasonable equilibrium. A typical example is when changing world price levels cause a country’s exports to plummet in value, while the valuation of its imports remains relatively stable.

This phenomenon draws its name from a graphical illustration of its effects over time. Plotting time on a horizontal axis against price level on a vertical axis, with agricultural prices and industrial prices shown in two separate curves, the graph should appear like a pair of opening scissors. Historically, the phenomenon has most frequently taken the form of falling prices for agricultural produce and steady prices for industrial goods. Thus, the price scissors is most devastating to countries that are net agricultural exporters and net industrial importers. Perhaps the most vivid illustration of the effects of the price scissors and its potential effects occurred in countries throughout Eastern Europe in the early 1930s. The phenomenon is not exclusively of international scale: early Soviet Union had industry/agriculture price scissors internally, see Scissors Crisis.

The crash of the United States stock market in 1929 heralded the beginning of the Great Depression, but the crisis in Eastern Europe began in earnest with the collapse of the Creditanstalt in Vienna in 1931. In the ensuing worldwide panic, agricultural prices dropped severely, while prices for industrial goods remained relatively stable as governments imposed protectionist policies. Between 1929 and 1934, agricultural prices received in Romania dropped 56%, while industrial prices paid fell only 19%. Across the region, agricultural prices dropped an average of 34% over that period. Unsurprisingly, the opening of the price scissors was especially hard on peasants. As prices fell, peasants worked hard to increase their output of grain. Because of the highly inelastic demand for grain, however, this effort only further decreased prices and revenues, impoverishing peasants even more. Peasant incomes dropped by nearly 60% in Romania and Poland.

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