双语:Free Exchange: A Political Economy
发布时间:2017年12月21日
发布人:nanyuzi  

Free Exchange: A Political Economy

自由交流:政治经济学


A new anthology of essays reconsiders Thomas Piketty’s masterwork

一本新出版的文集重新思考托马斯·皮凯蒂的代表作


“A Modern Marx” was how The Economist described Thomas Piketty three years ago, when he was well on his way to selling more than 2m copies of “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”. It was meant as a compliment, mostly: as advice to take the analysis seriously, yet to treat the policy recommendations with caution. The book’s striking warning, of the creeping dominance of the very wealthy, looks as relevant as ever: as Donald Trump’s heirs mind his business empire, he works to repeal inheritance tax. But “Capital” changed the agenda of academic economics far less than it seemed it might. A new volume of essays reflecting on Mr Piketty’s book, published in May, prods economists to do better. It is not clear they can.


三年前,托马斯·皮凯蒂的《21世纪资本论》销量即将突破两百万册。当时,《经济学人》将他比作当代马克思,大体上是想表达一种恭维:建议人们重视他的分析成果,但同时也要谨慎对待那些政策建议。这本书有关巨富阶层正悄然取得支配地位的警告震撼人心,如今看来也毫不过时:特朗普的继承人照管他的商业帝国之时,他正争取废除遗产税。然而,《21世纪资本论》远远未像当初看上去的那般改变了理论经济学的研究方向。5月出版的一本新文集审视了皮凯蒂的著作,敦促经济学家们谋求进步。他们能不能做到就不得而知了。


“After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality”, edited by Heather Boushey, Bradford DeLong and Marshall Steinbaum, is a book by economists, for economists. In that it resembles “Capital” itself. Before he was an unlikely cultural icon, Mr Piketty was a respected empirical economist. He was best known as one of a group of scholars, among them Emmanuel Saez and Anthony Atkinson, who used tax data to track long-run inequality. In “Capital” these data became the basis for an ambitious theory of capitalism. Mr Piketty argued that wealth naturally accumulates and concentrates, so that familial riches are ever more critical to determining an individual’s success or failure in life. The extravagant inequality of the Gilded Age could return if no preventive action is taken.


《皮凯蒂之后:关于经济学及不平等的议题》(After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality)由希瑟·布西(Heather Boushey)、布拉德福特·德隆(Bradford DeLong)以及马歇尔·斯坦鲍姆(Marshall Steinbaum)编选。这是一本经济学家写给经济学家看的书,就这点来看,该书与《21世纪资本论》相似。在出人意料地成为文化偶像之前,皮凯蒂是一位受人尊敬的实证经济学家,他最为人所知的一点是他和伊曼纽尔·赛斯(Emmanuel Saez)及安东尼·阿特金森(Anthony Atkinson)一样,都是利用税收数据来追踪长期不平等状况的学者。在《21世纪资本论》一书中,这些数据构成了一个有关资本主义的宏大理论的基础。皮凯蒂认为,财富自然而然就会积累并集中,因此,家族财富在决定一个人一生的成败时日益关键。如果不采取预防措施,镀金时代的严重不平等状况也许将卷土重来。


Mr Piketty chose to compress his sweeping narrative into a compact economic model backed up by a few simple equations. The mathematical expression at the heart of his book is little more complicated than an emoji: r > g. It says that the rate of return on capital, r, has historically been greater than g, the growth rate of the economy. Why does this matter? It means, first, that the ratio of an economy’s wealth to its output tends to rise, which increases the relative economic power of wealth in society. Second, because the distribution of wealth is usually less equal than the distribution of income, faster growth in wealth than in GDP means a steady increase in inequality. Third, it implies that income from capital will grow as a share of income (and income from labour will fall). So being born rich (or marrying well) becomes a surer route to success than working hard or starting a firm. It is a recipe for social stagnation, and perhaps crisis.


皮凯蒂选择将自己洋洋洒洒的论述压缩成一个紧凑的经济学模型,用几个简单的等式来支撑。作为本书核心内容的数学表达式不比一个表情符号复杂多少:r > g,表示资本回报的增长速度r在历史上一直快于经济增长的速度g。这一点为何重要?首先,这意味着一个经济体的财富与其产出的比率往往呈上升趋势,这会提高财富在社会上的相对经济实力。第二,由于财富分配的公平程度通常都不如收入分配,如果财富增长快过GDP增长,就会令不平等稳步加剧。第三,这个公式意味着资本收益占收入的比重会增加,而劳动收入的比重则会减少。这样一来,和辛勤工作或创办公司比起来,投胎好(或嫁得好、娶得好)就成了更稳妥的成功之路。这会导致社会停滞,说不定还会引发危机。

 

Yet, despite its 700-odd pages, “Capital” gave important details short shrift. “After Piketty” takes these lacunae in turn, pointing out, essay by essay, how Mr Piketty might have devoted more space to the role of human capital and technological change, the structure of the firm and the rise in outsourcing, sexual inequality, geography and so on. Gareth Jones, for example, argues that in “Capital” geographical divisions are treated as “container[s] for data” – that is, the areas within which various statistical agencies do their work – rather than as arenas with changeable boundaries within which the rough-and-tumble tussle between labour and capital plays out.


然而,尽管厚达七百多页,《21世纪资本论》还是忽略了一些重要的细节。《皮凯蒂之后》填补了这些缺漏,用一篇篇文章逐一指出,皮凯蒂本应花费更多笔墨探讨人力资本及技术变革、企业组织结构及外包的兴起、性别不平等和地理等因素的影响。例如,加雷斯·琼斯(Gareth Jones)指出,在《21世纪资本论》中,皮凯蒂将地理区划视作数据的容器,即各路统计机构的工作领域,而不是劳动力与资本在其中混战、边界不断变化的竞技场。


Most economists have focused on Mr Piketty’s model. They question the parameters needed to make it behave as Mr Piketty reckoned it would. “After Piketty” includes an example of the genre, by Devesh Raval. As wealth accumulates, economists reckon the return on capital should fall; society has less use for the hundredth factory or server than the first. As it does, capitalists will seek new, profitable ways to deploy their wealth: by investing in machines that can replace labour, for instance. If firms are relatively good at using their growing piles of capital to replace labour – if, in the language of economics, the elasticity of substitution of capital for labour is greater than one – then wealth can pile up, as Mr Piketty suggests. If, instead, the return falls a lot as markets struggle to put capital into action, then r will decline towards g, and the ratio of wealth to GDP will eventually stabilise. Mr Raval echoes many other economists in pointing out that most estimates of the elasticity of substitution find it to be less than one.


大多数经济学家都聚焦于皮凯蒂的模型,质疑模型的参数能否像皮凯蒂认为的那样令模型发挥作用。《皮凯蒂之后》中由戴维什·拉瓦尔(Devesh Raval)撰写的文章便代表着这种质疑的声音。随着财富的积累,经济学家认为资本收益应该会下降:对于社会来说,第一百个工厂或服务器的用处小于第一个。随着资本收益下降,资本家便会去寻觅有利可图的新途径来配置自己的财富,例如投资可取代劳动力的机器。如果企业在利用不断增长的大笔资金取代劳动力这一方面做得还算不错——用经济学的说法,就是资本和劳动力间的替代弹性大于1——那么财富就会像皮凯蒂认为的那样积累起来。如果市场无法令资本实现更佳配置,导致资本收益大幅降低,那么r就会下降至g的水平,财富占GDP的比率将最终稳定下来。除拉瓦尔外,还有其他很多经济学家指出,大多数对替代弹性的估算得出的结果均小于1。


In economics, this passes for a damning critique. Yet the argument treats the elasticity of substitution as a meaningful parameter in a well-behaved economy. It may not be. In the most incisive essay in “After Piketty”, Suresh Naidu describes a “domesticated Piketty” who communicates in the language of economics and whose argument hinges on things like the elasticity of substitution. Yet in “Capital” there is also a “wild Piketty” who pays attention to social norms, political institutions and the exercise of raw power. He suggests that r > g is not a theory to be disproved but a historical fact to be explained. And he suggests that the wealthy use their influence to shape laws and society in order to guarantee themselves a better return on their wealth.


在经济学中,这样的批评可算切中要害。不过这一论证将替代弹性看作经济运转良好的一个重要参数,但也许它并不是。《皮凯蒂之后》中最尖锐的文章出自苏雷什·耐杜(Suresh Naidu)之手。他刻画了一个被驯化的皮凯蒂:这个皮凯蒂用经济学的语言来传达自己的思想,并依赖替代弹性等因素作为自己的论据。不过《21世纪资本论》中还有一个野性难驯的皮凯蒂。这个皮凯蒂关注社会规范、政治制度以及原始权力的运用。他提出,r > g不是一个有待否决的理论,而是一个需要去解释的历史事实。他还指出,富人会运用自己的权势来影响法律和社会,以此保证自己的财富能获得更好的回报。


Do they? The record of the past 40 years is suggestive. Top tax rates have fallen, financial regulation has weakened (at least before the crisis of 2007-08) and companies have found it easier to reduce their obligations to workers. Economists often praise such moves as enhancing efficiency. Yet, somewhat awkwardly, this history is also consistent with a story in which the wealthy seek to protect their returns at the expense of labour. A focus on efficiency is unobjectionable in a world in which political and institutional stability can be taken for granted, much less so in a world in which it cannot.


富人果真如此吗?过去40年的历程多少有所提示。最高税率下降,金融监管放松(至少在2007到2008年的金融危机发生前是这样),企业发现减少对员工应尽的义务也变得容易了。经济学家通常会称赞这些举措提高了效率。然而,多少有些尴尬的是,这段历史也跟这样的叙事相一致:富人们想方设法保护自己的收益,不惜牺牲劳动力。在一个政治及体制稳定可被视作理所当然的世界里,注重效率无可厚非,而如果不是在这样的世界,对效率的注重就不是无可争议的事了。


What is to be done?

该怎么做?


Politics is “everywhere and nowhere” in Mr Piketty’s book, as Elisabeth Jacobs notes in her essay. What “After Piketty” reveals is the message lurking within all the undeveloped arguments in “Capital” about politics and ideology. It is that economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if they can describe how capitalism works only when politics is unchanging.


正如伊丽莎白·雅克布斯(Elisabeth Jacobs)在其文章中提到的那样,政治在皮凯蒂的书中无处不在,又难觅踪影。《21世纪资本论》一书中,所有对政治和意识形态未充分展开的论证都潜藏着一个信息,它在《皮凯蒂之后》中得到揭示,那就是如果经济学家只能在政治保持不变的情况下阐述资本主义如何运作,那他们为自己设置的任务就太简单也太没用处了。


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