Research On The Evolution Of The Salt-Monopolistic Institution Of Ming Dynasty

Salt is a necessary good in people's life. It was easy to be controlled by some monopoly, because production of salt was limited by some natural resources, such as sea, salt-lake and salt-well, and so on. Old-Chinese monarchs always held the monopoly of salt in their hands, and the tax of salt became the important resource of country wealth. There were two kinds of monopolistic institutions about salt: one was the direct monopolistic institution that government controlled the whole process of salt from product to sale; the other was indirect monopolistic institution that government only controlled the product of salt and traders were with responsibility for sale. The salt-monopolistic institution of Ming Dynasty was of indirect monopolistic institution.As an important economic institution, the salt-monopolistic institution of Ming Dynasty not only affected the wealth of country, but also was closely linked with traders'business and fortune. While Ming dynasty linked salt-monopoly with frontier defence, the salt-monopolistic institution of Ming Dynasty not only affected economy of country, but also was relation with polity and national defence. So the institution was a part of the deep-level structure in Ming society. The institution changed in order with Kaizhong Law, Kaizhongzhese Law and Register Law, etc. There were inherent logic relation and path dependence in processes of changes that is very difficult to explain by New-classic Economics or Evolutional Economics. Historical Institutional Analysis can do it by bridge with NE to EE. In use of HIA, the thesis have concluded that: Kaizhong law was an equilibrium of game between the monarch and traders, when parameters(such as preference, technology and payoff etc.) didn't change, it was self-enforcement, that is to say, traders could make the monarch to obey rules; the trader's organization can support Kaizhong law to self-enforce through its rules and fuction that can affect people's expect-payoff and belief; at first, the rise of Waiting Problem made Kaizhong Law inefficient, and didn't change the parameters of game, while with the deterioration of Waiting Problem, the key parameters began to transform and the new equilibrium came into being, and Kaizhongzhese Law, Register Law began to rise one by one, and then the new institutional life-cycle had risen. The seven chapters of the thesis go as follows.Chapter 1 is Introduction. In this chapter, we present the motivation for writing the thesis and the evaluative survey of relevant literatures.Chapter 2 is the Theoretical Framework. In this chapter, at first, we present a survey toward New Institutional Economic History development, then build our analytic framework.Chapter 3 study the resource and essence of Kaizhong Law, and indicate that the trader's organization in Ming Dynasty solve the commitment problem between the monarch and traders, so support self-enforcement of Kaizhong Law.Chapter 4 point that Waiting Problem is the direct cause that the salt-monopolistic institution change. The causes of Waiting Problem are the monarch's dynamic inconsistency and rent-seeking of officials and traders.Chapter 5 mainly study that the institutional marginal change of the salt-monopolistic institution of Ming Dynasty. We study the institutional characters, enforcement conditions and the economic implications of Kaizhongzhese Law.Chapter 6 study that the institutional change of the salt-monopolistic institution of Ming Dynasty. In this chapter, we will study the contractual nature and the mechanism of governance of Register Law.Chapter 7 is Concluding Remarks. The concluding chapter summarizes the main results of the thesis, and presents some future research directions.