Imperfect competition in China's import market of roundwood and lumber products

Abstract

China has become the largest importer of roundwood and lumber products in recent years. In this study, the degree of competition among major supplying countries in China's import market is measured through the inverse residual demand elasticity over 1995-2015. Time-series properties of the data are considered through the autoregressive distributed lag model. The analysis reveals that market power exists in roundwood and lumber markets for a few supplying countries. The suppliers in the lumber import market have more market power than those in the roundwood market. Individual countries with substantial market power have more fluctuations in trading volumes.