IT之家5月22日消息 今日，比爾蓋茨（Bill Gates）通過比爾·蓋茨官方公眾號分享了它的2020夏季書單，推薦了一本由阿比吉特·班納吉（美）與埃斯特·迪弗洛（法）所著名為《好的經濟學》的書。
IT之家了解到，比爾蓋茨認為，《好的經濟學》是《你當像鳥兒飛向你的山》《鄉下人的悲歌》及《掃地出門》等書的有益補充，這些書生動描繪了在美國出身貧寒是一種怎樣的體驗。班納吉與迪弗洛使用大量數據來洞悉全局，讓我們得以通過更廣闊的視角觀察這些人的動因。
以下為比爾蓋茨書評全文：
Did you know that there’s no such thing as the Nobel Prize for Economics? The economics award that most people refer as the Nobel is an add-on, the product of a 1968 gift from a big bank celebrating its 300th anniversary. That’s why the name of the award is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
你知道其實並沒有所謂的「諾貝爾經濟學獎」嗎？多數人所說的「諾貝爾」經濟學獎是另加上去的，由一家大銀行為慶祝其成立300周年於1968年捐贈設立。這就是為什麼該獎項的名稱其實是「瑞典國家銀行紀念阿爾弗雷德·諾貝爾經濟學獎」。
The economics prize differs from the official Nobel Prizes in another way: It honors a social science rather than a natural science. Economics is not grounded in natural laws like Newton’s law of gravitation. It’s rooted in human nature, which is notoriously hard to predict.
該經濟學獎有別於官方的諾貝爾獎之處還在於：它用以表彰社會科學而非自然科學。經濟學並不像牛頓萬有引力定律那樣以自然法則為基礎。它根植於人性，而人性的難以預測眾所周知。
I think about this every time I hear about a new book on economics and consider adding it to my bookbag. I have no trouble finding books by smart economists. But I do sometimes worry that those economists won’t have appropriate humility about what economic methods can and cannot teach us.
每當聽到一本經濟學的新書並考慮將其收入囊中時，我都會想到這一點。找到聰明經濟學家的著作對我來說並不難。但我有時確實會擔心，這些經濟學家不會對經濟學方法能做什麼和不能做什麼保留適當的謙虛。
Two economists who are honest about the limits of economics and don’t oversimplify are the husband-and-wife team of Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. They’re the couple who started MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). I have always admired their rigorous, experimental approach to assessing the merits of different approaches to fighting poverty, and I loved their first book, Poor Economics (2011). Therefore, I was pleased when I learned they were going to publish a second book, Good Economics for Tough Times. Two weeks before the book hit the bookshelves, they won the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, along with their colleague Michael Kremer.
由阿比吉特·班納吉和埃斯特·迪弗洛兩位經濟學家組成的夫妻檔，對於經濟學的局限性既坦誠，又不過分簡單化。他們二人在麻省理工學院共同創建了「貧困行動實驗室」（J-PAL）。我一直很欣賞他們以嚴謹、實驗性的方法來評估不同扶貧方式的優點，我也喜歡他們的第一本書《貧窮的本質》（ 2011年出版）。因此，當得知他們要出版第二本書《好的經濟學》時，我很開心。在這本書上架前兩周，他們與同事麥可·克雷默一同獲得了2019年瑞典國家銀行紀念阿爾弗雷德·諾貝爾經濟學獎。
Just like the couple’s first book, their new one is easily accessible for readers who don’t have a degree in economics. And they acknowledge at the very beginning, 「We, the economists, are often too wrapped up in our models and our methods and sometimes forget where science ends and ideology begins.」
就像這對夫婦的第一本書一樣，他們的新書對於沒學過經濟學的讀者而言同樣簡明易懂。他們在一開始就表示：「我們這些經濟學家，常常過度專注於自己的模型和方法，有時會忘記哪裡是科學的盡頭和意識形態的開啟。」
In one important respect, the new book is a significant departure from their previous one. Poor Economics, as its name suggests, focused on poor countries. Good Economics for Tough Times focuses instead on the policy debates that are getting so much attention in wealthy countries. (Obviously, since it was written long before the coronavirus pandemic, it doesn’t touch on that issue.) Although it’s clear that their real expertise is microeconomics (the study of how individual people make decisions) rather than macroeconomics (the study of how an overall economy behaves), Banerjee and Duflo are good at assembling and explaining the facts behind contentious issues like immigration, inequality, and trade.
在一個重要的方面，這本新書跟前一本截然不同。《貧窮的本質》，顧名思義聚焦在貧窮國家。與之相反，《好的經濟學》關注的是富裕國家中備受關注的政策辯論（很顯然，由於此書完成於新冠疫情暴發之前，故未涉及此問題）。儘管兩位作者真正的專業領域是微觀經濟學（研究個人如何做選擇）而不是宏觀經濟學（研究整個經濟體如何表現），班納吉與迪弗洛善於整合和解釋爭議事件背後的事實，例如移民、不平等和貿易等。
I』ll give you an example from their discussion of immigration. It turns out that the field of economics has more clarity than I realized about the effect of immigration on jobs.
我會給你一個他們探討移民問題的例子。原來從經濟學解讀移民對就業的影響，可以比我想像中的要清楚許多。
You have probably heard the argument that when immigrants who are willing to work for low pay show up in a community, they almost inevitably—based on the rules of supply and demand—trigger the reduction of wages for some percentage of the local population. But Good Economics for Tough Times shows how that concern is misplaced. 「There’s no credible evidence that even relatively large inflows of low-skilled migrants hurt the local population,」 Banerjee and Duflo write. 「This has a lot to do with the peculiar nature of the labor market. Very little about it fits the standard story about supply and demand.」
你可能聽過這樣一種論點：基於供需關係原則，一個社區中願意低薪工作的移民會不可避免地導致一定比例的當地居民收入的削減。然而，《好的經濟學》展示了這種擔憂是如何錯誤地產生的。「並沒有可靠的證據表明，低技術移民的大量湧入會對當地居民造成傷害。」班納吉與迪弗洛在書中寫道，「這與勞動力市場的特性有很大關係。在勞動力市場上，幾乎很少有符合標準供需關係的情況。」
Why doesn’t the labor market fit the standard story? Banerjee and Duflo show that migrants are not just workers; they’re also consumers. 「The newcomers spend money: they go to restaurants, they get haircuts, they go shopping. This creates jobs, and mostly jobs for other low-skilled people.」 Another reason is that an influx of new laborers reduces companies』 incentive to automate their operations. 「The promise of a reliable supply of low-wage workers makes it less attractive to adopt labor-saving technologies.」
為什麼勞動力市場不符合標準的供需關係？班納吉與迪弗洛指出，移民不僅是勞動者，而且是消費者。「這些新移民會消費：他們去餐館、去理髮、去購物。消費會創造新的就業，並且其中絕大部分是提供給其他低技術人群的。」另一個原因在於，新勞工的湧入降低了企業實現自動化的積極性。「有了低薪工人的可靠供應保證，採用減少勞動力的技術手段便少了吸引力。」
In contrast with immigration, economists do not have clear data or conclusions when it comes to what drives economic growth. As I noted in my reviews of Robert Gordon’s great book The Rise and Fall of American Growth and Vaclav Smil’s masterpiece Growth, I have a lot of optimism about the ways artificial intelligence and other digital tools will accelerate learning, productivity, and innovation. But that said, Banerjee and Duflo make a powerful case that it’s just about impossible to make specific predictions in this area. 「Of all the things economists have tried (and mostly failed) to predict, growth is one area where we have been particularly pathetic.」
與移民問題形成鮮明對比的是，在談及推動經濟增長的因素時，經濟學家們並沒有明確的數據或結論。正如我之前在關於羅伯特·戈登的精彩著作《美國增長的起落》以及瓦科拉夫·斯米爾的傑作《增長》（Growth，中文名暫譯）的評論中所提到，我非常樂觀地相信人工智慧及其它數字工具，將加快學習、生產力與創新。話雖如此，班納吉與迪弗洛提出了有力的觀點，認為在這一領域做出具體的預測幾乎是不可能的。「在經濟學家們試圖預測（又多以失敗告終）的所有事情中，對於增長的預測尤其令人失望。」
Some economists argue that there’s at least one sure-fire way to boost an economy: cutting taxes. But Banerjee and Duflo show that even the iconic version of these cuts, the major tax reform enacted under Ronald Reagan, did little if anything to accelerate growth. 「There is no evidence the Reagan tax cuts, or the Clinton top marginal rate increase, or the Bush tax cuts did anything to change the long-run growth rate,」 Banerjee and Duflo write.
一些經濟學家認為，至少有一種萬無一失的方法來刺激經濟：減稅。但是班納吉與迪弗洛表示，即使是減稅政策的標杆——隆納·雷根任期內頒布的重大稅制改革——也幾乎沒有起到刺激經濟增長的作用。「沒有證據表明，裡根的減稅政策、柯林頓的最高邊際稅率提高政策和布希的減稅政策，對於經濟的長期增長率有任何改變。」班納吉與迪弗洛寫道。
But don’t high taxes on wealthy people like me reduce our incentive to work hard and create new jobs? The answer is no. Banerjee and Duflo found no evidence that people at the top of the income distribution change their behavior in ways that affect the overall rate of economic growth. 「In a policy world that has mostly abandoned reason … let’s be clear: Tax cuts for the wealthy do not produce economic growth.」 Banerjee and Duflo have given me even more reason to advocate, as I did in a recent post, for a tax system in which, if you have more money, you pay a higher percentage in taxes and the rich pay more than we currently do.
但是，對像我一樣的富人徵收高額稅負，是否會削弱我們努力工作的積極性和創造新工作崗位的動力？答案是否定的。班納吉與迪弗洛沒有發現任何證據可以表明，處於收入分配頂端這部分人的行為改變會影響整體的經濟增速。「在一個幾乎放棄講道理的政策世界中……讓我們直說吧：為富人減稅並不會帶來經濟增長。」班納吉與迪弗洛讓我有了更多理由去倡導這樣一種稅收制度（就像我在近期一篇文章中寫的那樣）：你越有錢，你的稅率就應該越高；富人要比現在繳更多的稅。
Banerjee and Duflo also offer good insights on what’s causing the economic despair in rural and Rust Belt America (before COVID). They offer a stinging critique of the financial sector and its behavior, but they find that the biggest driver of despair is the sorting that results from the expansion of global trade. 「Those lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, with the right skills or the right ideas, grew wealthy, sometimes fabulously so,」 they write. 「For the rest … jobs were lost and not replaced…. Trade has created a more volatile world where jobs suddenly vanish only to turn up a thousand miles away.」
班納吉與迪弗洛還就（新冠疫情暴發之前）造成美國農村及鐵鏽地帶經濟絕望的原因提出了很好的見解。他們對金融業及其行為提出了尖銳的批評，但他們發現導致絕望的最大動因是全球貿易擴張產生的排序。「那些足夠幸運的人在正確的時間、正確的地點具有正確的技能或正確的想法。他們獲得了財富，有時甚至是驚人的財富。」他們寫道，「對於其餘的人來說……丟了工作又找不到其他機會……貿易創造了一個更加動蕩的世界，就業崗位突然在這裡消失，卻在千裡之外的地方出現。」
I’m in favor of trade, though I think Banerjee and Duflo overemphasize the role it plays in job losses and underemphasize the big role played by technological advances. But they are right that political leaders could be more honest that there are winners and losers from trade and from new technologies—and then enact smart policies to help. Sadly, 「the United States [did] not come close to compensating workers who lost out,」 they write.
我是支持貿易的，雖然我認為班納吉與迪弗洛過分強調了貿易對於工作機會流失的作用，而低估了技術進步所起到的作用。但他們有一點是對的，那就是政治領導人可以更加誠實地承認，貿易和新技術既產生了贏家又產生了輸家，接著他們就可以推出明智的政策來提供幫助。可悲的是，「美國沒有補償這些失業工人」，他們如此寫道。
In the end, Good Economics for Tough Times felt to me like a good complement to books that paint intimate portraits of what it’s like to grow up poor in America, including Educated, Hillbilly Elegy, and Evicted. Banerjee and Duflo use extensive data to zoom out and show us a wider view of these human dynamics. Their research is not hard science, like chemistry or physics. But I found most of it to be useful and compelling. I suspect you would too.
最後，在我看來，《好的經濟學》是《你當像鳥兒飛向你的山》、《鄉下人的悲歌》及《掃地出門》等書的有益補充，這些書生動描繪了在美國出身貧寒是一種怎樣的體驗。班納吉與迪弗洛使用大量數據來洞悉全局，讓我們得以通過更廣闊的視角觀察這些人的動因。他們的研究不是像化學或物理這樣的硬科學，但我發現其中大部分既有用又有說服力。我想你也會有同感。