The Global Food Price Crisis and China-World Rice Market Integration: A Spatial-Temporal Rational Expectations Equilibrium Model

In this paper, we examine how China, the world’s largest rice producer and consumer, would affect the international rice market if it liberalized its trade in rice and became more fully integrated into the global rice market. The impacts of trade liberalization are estimated using a spatial-temporal rational expectations model of the world rice market characterized by four interdependent markets with stochastic production patterns, constant-elasticity demands, expected-profit maximizing private speculative storers, and government stockpiling authorities. The results show that full entry by China into the world rice market will substantially reduce and stabilize the world rice price, reducing the risk faced by major importers, particularly price spikes caused by restrictive trade policies implemented by major exporters.