Deconstructing fertilizer price spikes: Evidence from Chinese urea fertilizer market

• No long-run linkage between domestic and export prices in China’s urea market. • Decomposes urea prices using structural vector autoregressions . • Export and corn demand shocks have a limited impact on Chinese urea price fluctuations. • Coal-driven supply shocks significantly impact recent urea price spikes in China. • Export restrictions have a limited effect on stabilizing China’s urea prices. Recent fertilizer price spikes in 2021–2022, coupled with government interventions by major exporting countries, have raised global concerns about food security. This study investigates the key drivers of urea prices in China—the world’s largest producer and a major exporter. First, we analyze price transmission between China’s domestic spot and export urea markets, finding no cointegration even prior to the export restrictions introduced in October 2021. Next, we employ a structural vector autoregression model to examine domestic urea price spikes, using a heteroskedasticity-based identification strategy that allows for smoothly transitioning covariances. We decompose urea prices into four structural shocks: supply shocks driven by energy price changes, demand shocks linked to crop price fluctuations, export demand shocks, and market-specific idiosyncratic shocks unrelated to the first three. The findings reveal that rising energy costs and idiosyncratic factors were the main drivers of urea prices in China from 2018 to 2023, while shocks to corn prices and export demand had a smaller impact. Overall, the results indicate that recent export restrictions have had limited influence on domestic urea prices, calling into question the effectiveness of China’s October 2021 export restrictions as a price stabilization measure.