Shocks, Cycles and Adjustments : The Case of China's Hog Market under COVID-19 and ASF

China’s hog market faces the challenge of several external shocks, which arise from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, African Swine Fever (ASF) and related global trade uncertainties. This article develops a shocks, cycles and adjustments (SCA) model to evaluate the dynamic impact of different shock scenarios. The SCA model contributes to the existing toolbox for impact evaluation in commodity markets and provides insights into the timing of impact dynamics at refined time intervals. The SCA model is applied to evaluate five sets of concerned shock scenarios, which include demand shock, corn price increase, pork import restrictions, a second wave of ASF, and a combination of these shocks. Simulation results demonstrate the reaction of the hog cycle to different shocks with welfare implications. Based on the simulation results, we offer a new explanation to the long-debated varying dynamics in commodity cycles. We reconcile previous literatures exploring the sources and causes of commodity cycles. We find that production and economic adjustment lags generate constant and predictable hog cycles, while the external shocks lead hog cycles to be inconstant with varying phase and amplitude