The Réponse de J. Bodin aux paradoxes de M. de Malestroit (1568) was a tract, provoked by theories of Jean de Malestroit, in which Bodin offered one of the earliest scholarly analyses of the phenomenon of inflation, unknown prior to the 16th century. The background to discussion in the 1560s was that by 1550 an increase in the money supply in Western Europe had brought general benefits. But there had also been appreciable inflation. Silver arriving via Spain from the South American mine of Potosí, together with other sources of silver and gold, from other new sources, was causing monetary change.

Bodin was after Martín de Azpilicueta, who had alluded to the issue in 1556 (something noticed also by Gomara in his unpublished Annals), an early observer that the rise in prices was due in large part to the influx of precious metals. Analysing the phenomenon, amongst other factors he pointed to the relationship between the amount of goods and the amount of money in circulation. The debates of the time laid the foundation for the "quantity theory of money". Bodin mentioned other factors: population increase, trade, the possibility of economic migration, and consumption that he saw as profligate.