1930年代中国長江下流域の米市場と契約執行メカニズム

無錫米市の事例

抄録

The exchange of a transaction contract and the enforcement of such a contract are different economic behaviors. In order to enforce a contract, some device to prevent traders from engaging in dishonest behavior is needed. This means that the engagement of exchange does not necessarily result in actual exchange, and whenever traders can increase their gain by cheating, they have an incentive to behave dishonestly. There are always some uncertainties of this kind in transaction contracts. In order to prevent opportunistic behaviors during transactions, an institution that decreases the incentives for such behaviors is required. Such an institution is called an ‘enforcement mechanism’ in the field of historical institutional analysis. This paper investigates the enforcement mechanism involved in rice market transactions in Wuxi city in the1930s.
In the 1930s rice produced in Anhui province was transported to the intermediary market in Wuxi city, where it was bought by merchants from Shanghai or Hangzhou where the rice was consumed. In Wuxi rice market, the sellers could not deal directly with the rice buyers, but had to be introduced to buyers by brokers. There were no fixed relationships between the merchants and the brokers. In other words, each time the merchants from Anhui province came to Wuxi market, they had to search for the brokers who could introduce the buyers to them. This paper examines how dishonest transactions between brokers and merchants were prevented, in other words, how the transaction contracts between the merchants and the brokers were enforced.
The main conclusion of this paper is that the linkage between brokers and merchants decreased their incentive to cheat mutually and enforced their transaction contract. For example, if one broker cheated a trader, the information about that broker would soon be known to all other merchants through the linkage. As a result, the broker would lose future trade, and this potential loss of reputation decreased their incentive to engage in dishonest behavior. It is concluded that such a ‘reputation mechanism’ within the linkage enforced their transaction contract.