Towards Recoupling? Assessing the Global Impact of a Chinese Hard Landing through Trade and Commodity Price Channels

Gauvin, Ludovic; Rebillard, Cyril

Towards Recoupling? Assessing the Global Impact of a Chinese Hard Landing through Trade and Commodity Price Channels

Abstract: China s rapid growth over the past decade has been one of the main drivers of the rise in mineral commodity demand and prices. At a time when concerns about the sustainability of China s growth model are rising, this paper assesses to what extent a hard landing in China would impact other countries, with a focus on trade and commodity price channels. After reviewing the main arguments pointing to a hard landing scenario historical rebalancing precedents, overinvestment, unsustainable debt trends, and a growing real estate bubble we focus on a sample of thirty-six countries, and use a global VAR methodology adapted to conditional forecasting to simulate the impact of a Chinese hard landing. We model metal and oil markets separately to account for their different end-use patterns and consumption intensity in China, and we identify three specific transmission channels to net commodity exporters: through real exports, through income effects (related to commodity prices), and through investment (a fall in commodity prices reducing incentives to invest in the mining and energy sectors); we also look at the role played by the exchange rate as a shock absorber. According to our estimates, emerging economies (ex. China) would be hardest hit with a 7.5 percent cumulated growth loss after five years , in particular in South-East Asia but also in commodity-exporting regions such as Latin America; advanced economies would be less affected. The "growth gap" between emerging and advanced economies would be considerably reduced, leading to partial recoupling.

Keywords: China; hard landing; spillovers; global VAR; conditional forecast; commodities; recoupling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 E17 E32 F44 F47 Q02 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 62 pages
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-for, nep-mac and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

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