The Grain Market between the Reigns of Alexey Mikhailovich and Catherine the Great: Was there a ‘Price Revolution’?

The author of this article attempts to reveal and systematise archival data on grain prices in Russia between the 1650s and 1700s and analyse their dynamics by comparing them with data for the eighteenth century. The study is based on a wide range of archival sources from the funds of the RSAAA (RGADA), CSA of Moscow (TsGA of Moscow), DM NLR (OR RNB), and SFI CANNR (GKU TsANO). The data from these sources make it possible to construct time series describing rye and oat price dynamics in the northern and central non-black earth regions of Russia. The author substantiates the homogeneity and reliability of the data received and determines the real prices. The resulting numbers make the author doubt the “price revolution” in eighteenth-century Russia. Throughout the eighteenth century, the average real prices remained below the level of the 1660s and 1670s. Only in the 1790s did prices briefly exceed this level. Overall, the Russian grain market was characterised by long-term price fluctuations. The author aims to explain this dynamic by analysing supply and demand in the grain market. More particularly, for the first time in the historiography, the author examines the connection between Russian grain prices and yield in the second half of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is established that in most cases, the relationship between these indicators was direct: as grain yield increased, prices did too. The article explains this seeming paradox. The data published by the author help not only to estimate the impact of various factors on grain prices during the period in question, but also solve practical tasks regarding various price indicators in grain equivalents.

Communication Infrastructure and Stabilizing Food Prices: Evidence from the Telegraph Network in China

This paper exploits a unique historical setting—the expansion of the telegraph network in nineteenth-century China when railroads were limited—to examine whether the reduction of information frictions stabilizes grain prices. Employing a difference-in-difference (DID) strategy, we find that the telegraph access (i) reduced both the magnitude and the incidence of extreme prices; (ii) mitigated price responses to local weather shocks but increased the responsiveness to shocks in other telegraph-connected regions; (iii) affected the price volatility in a mean-reverting pattern; i.e., volatility rose in previously price-stable regions, and volatility decreased in price-unstable regions. (JEL D83, L96, N55, N75, O13, O18, Q11)

The significance of climate variability on early modern European grain prices

Grain was the most important food source in early modern Europe (c. 1500–1800), and its price influenced the entire economy. The extent to which climate variability determined grain price variations remains contested, and claims of solar cycle influences on prices are disputed. We thoroughly reassess these questions, within a framework of comprehensive statistical analysis, by employing an unprecedentedly large grain price data set together with state-of-the-art palaeoclimate reconstructions and long meteorological series. A highly significant negative grain price–temperature relationship (i.e. colder = high prices and vice versa) is found across Europe. This association increases at larger spatial and temporal scales and reaches a correlation of$$-\,0.41$$-0.41considering the European grain price average and previous year June–August temperatures at annual resolution, and of$$-\,0.63$$-0.63at decadal timescales. This strong relationship is of episodic rather than periodic (cyclic) nature. Only weak and spatially inconsistent signals of hydroclimate (precipitation and drought), and no meaningful association with solar variations, are detected in the grain prices. The significant and persistent temperature effects on grain prices imply that this now rapidly changing climate element has been a more important factor in European economic history, even in southern Europe, than commonly acknowledged.

The Effect of Oil Price on China’s Grain Prices: a VAR model

In recent years, the simultaneous trend of crude oil prices and agricultural prices has gained numerous attention of policy makers and market participants. This paper uses a vector autoregression model to examine the impact of the international crude oil prices on China’s grain prices including wheat, maize, soybean and rice during the period from June 2004 to December 2018. Empirical results indicates that international crude oil prices have a positive and significant impact on China’s grain prices. The response of grain prices would gradually decline to zero after reaching its maximum. Among these grain prices, the response of maize and soybean prices to crude oil prices is stronger than the rice and wheat prices. The error variance decomposition results show that most of the volatility in all price variables can be explained by own shocks, even though the fluctuation of grain prices are all affected by crude oil prices. JEL classification numbers: O13 Keywords: Oil prices, Grain prices, VAR, Variance decomposition.

The Beggar Giant

During late 1914, British strategic policy was to buttress France and wait for the Russian army to win the war against Germany. None of the allies was willing to make financial sacrifices for the greater strategic good if doing so risked endangering their postwar position. The weak economic and financial supports undergirding the Russian war machine, however, imperiled Britain’s hopes that its eastern ally could defeat Germany. Turkish entry into the war exacerbated Russia’s financial problems by preventing the export of Russian wheat through the Dardanelles. Not only did this cut the global supply of wheat by a third and cause grain prices to spiral, it also cut Russia off from its main source of foreign exchange and caused its international creditworthiness to collapse. At the end of 1914, Russia demanded massive loans from Britain to stay in the war, which Britain was reluctant to give.

A New Equilibrium? Economy and Society, 1375 to 1400

Historians have traditionally argued that the social and economic equilibrium of the post-plague period was finally established with the downturn in grain prices from the late 1370s and the softer policies of landlords after the revolt of 1381. Upon closer inspection, however, neither the economic nor the social trends were so straightforward. First, the economy experienced three distinct sub-periods and did not finally stabilize until the late 1390s. Second, the deteriorating economic conditions combined with changing attitudes to labour to fuel social conflict during the 1380s between certain types of landlords and their villein tenants and serfs. Tougher seigniorial attitudes are evident in the targeting of hereditary serfs on a few estates and in draconian revisions to the labour laws in 1388. This mini seigniorial reaction failed, however, and the bark of the new legislation proved worse than its bite. From the early 1390s the great landlords largely abandoned direct exploitation of their demesnes, running down their administrative structures and further releasing their grip upon their peasantry. The implications of all these changes by the 1390s for a possible golden age of the peasantry are discussed.

Grain Prices in the Account Book of Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery (1570s – 1610s)

The article describes the feasibility of the study of prices fixed for bread (rye, oat, barley and wheat), one of the basic products consumed by Russia’s population in the early Modern Time according to materials containing in monastery vkladnye knigi of the XVI–XVII centuries. As a rule, all monasteries used to keep account books irrespective of how large the monastery brethren were, the time of monastery foundation and means of support they had. As a rule, contributions to monastries were priced, and it makes it possible to use such contribution records for a study of price history including grain prices. The study is based on the records containing in the account book of Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery for the period between 1559/60–1620s. (Archive of St.Petersburg History Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences. Coll. 115. T. 1074). The found price data are comparable with grain prices published on the basis of account books of the Russian North monasteries and feature «bread» price changes in the region over the period of the crisis in the final third of the XVI century, Great Famine and the Time of Trouble at the turn of the XVII century.