Study On Grain Supply And Demand And Price Of Shandong Province In Eighteenth Century

In this paper,on the whole mainly includes two parts,the first part is estimation of grain supply and demand in the 18 th century in shandong province,the second part is about mathematical analysis of grain prices,including seasonal price differential and irregular fluctuations,market integration,and long-term trends.First of all,in this paper,we reassessed the cultivated land and population Shandong province in the 18 th century,through using a large number of state and government record data in the Q ing dynasty and the republic of China’s county annals.It is the most basic part of the full text.Because in terms of supply and demand of grain,and the cultivated land and population is the main influence factors.In addition,we also investigated many other factors influencing the supply,including major crops,farming system,the average output per mu and so on.In mid 18 th century,there is about less than 100 million mu of arable land in Shandong,and the provincial population is between twenty-three million and twenty-four million in the Qianlong 30(1765)before and after.The average household has 23.88 mu of arable land,and an average 4.20 mu.The main crops are sorghum,awadani,wheat,and soybeans at that time.Triple cropping system of two years is commonly practiced,and yield per mu is around 75 kilos.The annual province grain production is about 7.083 billion kilos,including seed consumption for 305 million kilos,rice transported to the capital by water consumption for 30.5 million kilos,and the entire population’s food each year for 4.896 billion kilos.So 1.802 billion kilos of grain every year is remained as the net surplus,accounting for about 25.43% of the total output.In addition,we also analyzed the warehouse supplies which may affect common people’s food,mainly includes the Changping and Shecang.the former is about 182.2 mangoku,the latter is about 18.6 mangoku,converted into no more than 150 million jins,but 1% of the province’s total,even in the middle of Qianlong when the warehouse supplies is at its best.Secondly,our paper respectively investigates the seasonal price differential and irregular fluctuations,market integration,and long-term trends of grain price of qianlong 7(1742)to qianlong 55(1790)in shandong province’s,these monthly price data come from grain price database of Yeh-chien Wang.Then we found that: first,the seasonal price differential of main grain in Shandong is obvious,the change trend is highly correlated with grain harvest time.And the variation of seasonal price differential of each prefecture is related to the degree of grain abundance and the effectiveness of the market,and has nothing to do with the prefecture reserves.Second,irregular fluctuations in grain prices in the long term mainly comes from the impact of the disaster,the severity of the impact degree has some relationship with the size of the disaster,and disaster situation before and after the year of disaster year.Although the government’s relief looks may very effective,but seems to have little effect on prices.Third,in the long run,the province’s grain prices is at very slow growth rate,average annual growth of 0.003,indicating that the influx of silver in the Qing dynasty has not cause significant inflation in Shandong province at that time,and also does not support of the conclusion of the tension of population and land.Fourth,we find two features of grain market in Shandong province: one is geo-relation,the price correlations between the adjacent prefectures are strong,between the nonadjacent prefectures are weak;the other is regionalization,the whole province’s grain market basically can be divided into two parts,the grain market of the north-west and central-southern of Shandong have a higher degree of integration,and Yizhou prefecture and east of Shandong are relatively low.In a word,if the distance between the two prefectures is close to or there is a river connection,their market tends to be more integrated.