Overcapacity has long been blamed as the main cause of the recession in the steel industry (especially the price decline), but this claim has not yet been backed by enough systematic analysis.
For this reason, the exact amount of overcapacity continues to be a controversial topic, and a consensus on realistic measurement of capacity is nonexistent. Therefore, one is hard-pressed to provide an insightful answer to the question of whether the current overcapacity level is more serious than the past.

In this article, we will first examine how serious global steel overcapacity is in terms of nominal amount. Reliable annual historical data for China and other countries are derived mainly from OECD data on nominal crude steel capacity, and are compared to annual crude steel consumption data. Next, we will try to measure the genuine steel overcapacity by introducing the concept of effective capacity, and investigate whether the steel industry’s recession after the financial crisis was triggered by overcapacity....