人民币汇率变动对中美贸易差额的影响

An Empirical Analysis of the Effect of RMB/Dollar Exchange Rate Variation on Sino-US Trade Balance

由中美巨额贸易顺差引起的人民币对美元汇价的争议,成为中美双边贸易关系中的一个重要而敏感的话题。通过建立中美双边进出口需求的存量调整模型,分别估算了中美贸易商品的进、出口需求价格弹性和收入弹性。实证研究结果表明,中美贸易商品的进、出口需求的短期价格弹性满足马歇尔—勒纳条件,意味着短期内人民币升值可以缓解中美贸易顺差。但同时发现,无论是在短期或长期内,中国对美国出口的收入弹性均大于中国从美国进口的收入弹性,说明受中美两国收入水平的影响,中美贸易不平衡的产生有其客观必然性。因此,仅仅依靠人民币升值并不能从根本上解决中美贸易失衡问题。

The paper empirically investigates the effect of RMB/Dollar exchange rate variation on Sino-US trade balance. We estimate the price and real income elasticity of China＇s import and export with China and find that that Marshall-Lerner condition is satisfied, which suggests that the appreciation of RMB could be helpful to alleviate the US trade deficit with China in the short run. However, we also find that the real income elasticity of China＇s export to the US is much larger than that of America＇s export to China,which implies that the changes in real income of both the US and China also attribute significantly to Sino-US trade balance. Therefore, only the appreciation of RMB or the adjustment of exchange rate policy in general by Chinese government,would not, suffice to improve the US trade imbalance with China.