家庭债务周期、总需求与中国出口

Household Debt Cycles,Aggregate Demand and China's Exports

改革开放以来,随着中国在国际贸易中的地位不断提升,个别霸权国家大肆宣扬“中国威胁论”,并公然挑起贸易争端,遏制中国发展。这都是建立在中国出口增长是外生供给冲击基础上的观点,均未从进口国国内经济角度深入剖析中国出口增长的原因。文章从家庭债务冲击引起总需求扩张的视角为中国的出口增长提供了一种新的解释,即进口国家庭债务扩张导致的总需求增加传导到国际贸易中,刺激了中国出口。文章首先构建了一个理论模型,阐述了家庭债务扩张向外贸的传导路径,然后利用1979-2018年的跨国信贷数据和中国出口数据,实证检验了进口国家庭债务扩张对中国出口的影响。实证结果验证了中国出口增长的一个重要原因是进口国家庭债务扩张驱动其国内消费需求增长,家庭债务每增加1个百分点会使得同期中国出口增长约0.428个百分点;并且这一结果在中国加入WTO前后和金融危机前后均成立。文章不仅有利于重新认识中国出口增长的成因,而且对于理解国内国际双循环实施过程中外循环与内循环间的联动以及重塑双循环的意义,都有非常重要的参考价值。

Since the reform and opening up,China's position in the world economy has been rising.Some countries have publicized the“China threat theory”.This paper offers a different explanation for China's export growth.That is,the increase in total demand caused by the household debt expansion in importing countries is transmitted to international trade,which stimulates China's exports.First of all,by constructing a theoretical model,this paper expounds the transmission path of household debt expansion to foreign trade,and clarifies the impact of household debt cycles on imports from China.In this two-phase model,households hold housing stock and housing loans in the first phase,and they sell the houses and pay off all the loans in the second phase.Based on this model,this paper proposes three hypotheses:(1)The increase of household debt will promote the rise of consumption,and then increase the consumption of foreign goods.(2)In the period of household debt expansion and relatively cheap prices of Chinese products,household debt has a greater impact on China's exports.(3)In the period of economic downturn or household sector deleveraging,household debt has a greater impact on China's exports.Secondly,using the data of transnational credit and China's exports from 1979 to 2018,this paper empirically tests the impact of the household debt expansion in importing countries on China's exports.The results show that,with other factors unchanged,an increase of 1 percentage point in foreign household debt will increase China's exports by about 0.428 percentage points in the same period.This result is established before and after China's accession to the WTO and the financial crisis.In addition,this paper also finds that although household debt expansion will boost China's export growth in the short term,it is not conducive to China's export growth in the long term,which is also consistent with the study of household debt cycles on economic growth(Mian et al.,2017).Finally,this paper discusses the channel and internal mechanism of the impact of foreign household debt on China's export growth.Using the panel VAR model,it is found that both rising housing prices and falling interest rates will expand household debt,and the resulting increase in consumption will promote the country's imports to other countries in the world,including China.The finding is consistent with the result estimated by the 2SLS method using housing prices and interest rates as household debt instrument variables.This paper has the following contributions:First,it provides a new explanation for China's export growth.Second,it expands the research scope of consumption demand channel of household debt expansion,and points out that the total demand expansion caused by household debt cycles can spill over to other global economies.At the same time,this paper is also of great value to understand the importance of"dual circulation".