China's role in global inflation dynamics

We apply a structural dynamic factor model to a large quarterly dataset covering 38 countries between 2002 and 2011 to analyze China's role in global inflation dynamics. We identify Chinese supply and demand shocks and examine their contributions to global price dynamics and the transmission mechanism. Our main findings are: (i) Chinese supply and demand shocks affect prices in other countries significantly. Demand shocks matter slightly more than supply shocks. Producer prices tend to be more strongly affected than consumer prices by Chinese shocks. The overall share of international inflation explained by Chinese shocks is notable (about 5 percent on average over all countries but not more than 13 percent in each region); (ii) Direct channels (via import and export prices) and indirect channels (via greater exposure to foreign competition and commodity prices) seem both to matter; (iii) Differences in trade (overall and with China) and in commodity exposure help explaining crosscountry differences in price responses.