Exorbitant Privilege of the Periodic Table? Geoeconomics, Endogenous Centrality and Strategic Minerals for the Green Transition
中文摘要
支撑能源转型的贸易网络是内生的经济对象，其结构是市场势力的来源。利用1995—2023年13种电气化金属的双边贸易数据，我们表明，这些材料的贸易已重组为以中国为中心的轴辐式体系，与化石燃料分散、多边的结构形成鲜明对比。这种中心性并非源于资源禀赋：中国持有的相关基础储量占比很小。它是通过加工投资、产业政策以及针对特定大宗商品的发展融资建立起来的——是一种均衡结果，而非地理上的偶然。我们在一个风格化模型中将此形式化：一国选择自身要变得多么中心化，模型表明中心性会转化为定价权——当网络更加集中、且下游需求与边缘供给更缺乏弹性时，世界价格对战略性供给削减的反应更为强烈。通过构建基于文本、针对特定商品的供给冲击并估计局部投影，我们发现关键金属的供给收缩使美国和欧盟的消费者价格上涨幅度约为同等化石燃料冲击的两倍，且持续更久。因此，中心性并非仅具描述意义：它创造了对全球价格的影响力。绿色转型降低了对碳氢化合物出口国的战略依赖，却围绕矿产供应链重构了这种依赖。
Abstract
Trade networks underpinning the energy transition are endogenous economic objects, and their structure is a source of market power. Using bilateral trade data for thirteen electrification metals over 1995–2023, we show that trade in these materials has reorganised into a hub-and-spoke system centred on China, in sharp contrast to the diffuse, multilateral structure of fossil fuels. This centrality did not follow from resource endowments: China holds few of the underlying reserves. It was built through processing investment, industrial policy, and commodity-targeted development finance—an equilibrium outcome rather than a geographical accident. We formalise this in a stylised model in which a country chooses how central to become, and show that centrality maps into pricing power: the world price response to a strategic supply cut is stronger when the network is more concentrated and downstream demand and fringe supply are more inelastic. Constructing text-based, commodity-specific supply shocks and estimating local projections, we find that supply contractions in critical metals raise US and EU consumer prices by roughly twice as much as comparable fossil-fuel shocks, and more persistently. Centrality is therefore not merely descriptive: it creates leverage over global prices. The green transition reduces strategic dependence on hydrocarbon exporters but reconstitutes it around mineral supply chains.