经济学家怎么会错得这么厉害?
Eugene Chen [译]
I.
MISTAKING BEAUTY FOR TRUTH
一、真相之上的华丽错误
It’s hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes — or so they believed — were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession. On the theoretical side, they thought that they had resolved their internal disputes. Thus, in a 2008 paper titled “The State of Macro” (that is, macroeconomics, the study of big-picture issues like recessions), Olivier Blanchard of M.I.T., now the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, declared that “the state of macro is good.” The battles of yesteryear, he said, were over, and there had been a “broad convergence of vision.” And in the real world, economists believed they had things under control: the “central problem of depression-prevention has been solved,” declared Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago in his 2003 presidential address to the American Economic Association. In 2004, Ben Bernanke, a former Princeton professor who is now the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, celebrated the Great Moderation in economic performance over the previous two decades, which he attributed in part to improved economic policy making.
现在说起来真叫人难以置信,但就是不久前,经济学家们还在为他们领域里取得的成就自行庆功摆好。这些成就——或者他们自己认为的成就——既有理论上的, 也有实践上的,把经济学这个行当带进一个黄金时期。在理论方面,经济学家们认为他们已经摆平了内部的争纷。因此,在2008年一篇题为“宏观现状”的论文里,(宏观指的是宏观经济学,一门研究诸如经济衰退之类大尺度画面问题的学问),麻省理工学院教授、现为国际货币基金组织首席经济学家布兰查德宣称:“宏观现状良好。” 他还说,昔日的论战已经休兵。 经济学家们“观点普遍趋同。”在现实世界中,经济学家则认为他们已经对各种事情有把握控制。“防范经济萧条的核心问题,已告解决,” 芝加哥大学教授卢卡斯在美国经济协会2003年度会长报告中如此宣布。2004年,前普林斯顿大学教授、现联邦储备委员会主席伯南克,大举庆祝前此20年 国家在经济表现上的大平稳,他把这个成就部分地归功于经济决策的进步。
Last year, everything came apart.
去年,凡此一切均分崩离析了。
Few economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the least of the field’s problems. More important was the profession’s blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy. During the golden years, financial economists came to believe that markets were inherently stable — indeed, that stocks and other assets were always priced just right. There was nothing in the prevailing models suggesting the possibility of the kind of collapse that happened last year. Meanwhile, macroeconomists were divided in their views. But the main division was between those who insisted that free-market economies never go astray and those who believed that economies may stray now and then but that any major deviations from the path of prosperity could and would be corrected by the all-powerful Fed. Neither side was prepared to cope with an economy that went off the rails despite the Fed’s best efforts.
很少有几个经济学家预见到当前危机的降临,不过, 这个预测失败还算不上是该领域的什么大问题。更重要的问题是该学科对市场经济有可能发生灾难性失灵一事带有盲点。在志得意满的黄金岁月里,金融经济学家开始相信市场的内在稳定性——相信股票和其他资产的定价在实际上都是对头的。在流行的各种模型中, 竟然没有一个对去年发生的那种经济崩溃的可能性有任何暗示。不过,宏观经济学家的观点还是有分歧的。主要的分野只是这样的两派:一派坚持自由市场经济不会迷途,另一派则相信尽管经济时有可能偏离,但一旦违背繁荣之路发生重大偏离,全能的美联储都能也都会加以纠正。任何一方都对“联储已然尽力,而经济依然脱轨”之经济现象毫无准备。
(待续)