【2009.10.13 华盛顿邮报】现实世界研究赢得诺贝尔经济学奖

rhapsody

【中文标题】现实世界研究赢得诺贝尔经济学奖
【原文标题】Real-World Research Wins Nobel Prize in Economics
【登载媒体】华盛顿邮报 2009年10月13日
【来源地址】http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp ... R2009101201487.html
【译者】音乐盒
【校对】rhapsody
【声明】本译文供Anti-CNN使用，未经AC或译者许可，谢绝转载。谢谢合作！
【致谢】感谢音乐盒TX的翻译

By Neil Irwin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 13, 2009

The Nobel Prize in economics was awarded Monday to two scholars whose research shed new light on how groups of people cooperate, honoring work that is grounded in the real world over more abstract mathematical models.
周一，诺贝尔经济学奖被授予两位学者，他们的研究使人们了解到人群间如何合作，获奖的成就基于现实世界，而不是更抽象的数学模型。

Elinor Ostrom, a political economist at Indiana University, and Oliver Williamson, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, will split the $1.4 million prize, formally known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Ostrom is the first woman to win the prize since it was created four decades ago.
印第安纳大学的政治经济学家埃莉诺·奥斯特罗姆和加州大学伯克利分校的经济学家奥利弗·威廉姆森将平分140万美元的奖金，奖项的正式名称是瑞典国家银行纪念阿尔弗雷德·诺贝尔经济学奖。奥斯特罗姆是此奖创立40年来首位获奖的女性。

With the selection, the prize committee passed over researchers whose work comes to bear on the current financial crisis and global recession. Instead of honoring scholars who had done theoretical work in finance or macroeconomics, it chose Ostrom, whose studies have deep practical implications for how to manage environmental constraints and help poor countries develop, and Williamson, whose explanations of how corporations work informs antitrust law.
在评选中，评奖委员会回避了那些与当前经济危机和全球萧条相关的研究学者。他们没有将荣誉授予那些在金融或宏观经济学中做出理论成就的学者，而是给了奥斯特罗姆和威廉姆森，前者的研究对于如何作好环境约束和如何帮助贫穷国家发展有着深刻的实用意义，而后者的研究则阐述了公司运作是如何启发了反垄断法。

Ostrom has studied the "tragedy of the commons," the notion that if a town has a common pasture on which everyone can graze sheep, the land will be overgrazed, making it less useful for everyone. Ostrom found that in a wide range of such settings -- such as shared fisheries, forests and water supplies -- people form voluntary arrangements to govern use and prevent overharvesting. That applies, she has found, even in the absence of a powerful centralized authority.
奥斯特罗姆研究了“公地悲剧”【译注：已故的美国生物学家加勒特·哈丁(Garrett Hardin)的经典文章，分析了个人在利用公共资源时存有私心而导致公共资源被过度利用所造成的恶果】，此提法来自这样一个案例，如果一个镇子里每个人都可以在一块公共草地上养一只羊，那么草地将会过度放牧，每个人获得的效用也就变少了。奥斯特罗姆发现在共用的渔场、森林和水源等一系列广泛的场合中，人们自发作出部署以管辖（公用品的）使用并防止过度开发。她还发现，即使是在不存在强有力的中央集权时，这也同样适用。

That has deep implications for how to help poor countries develop. If an aid agency were to build an irrigation system in a distant location that must be shared by different communities, it may need to establish whether those communities have a history of cooperating to share scarce resources, rather than expecting such restrictions to be enacted by fiat.
这对如何帮助穷国发展具有深刻启示。如果一个援助站要在一个偏远的地区修筑一个让不同社区共享的灌溉系统，就可能需要确证那些社区是否有过合作共享稀缺资源的历史，而不是期望通过法令来实施管制。

"She challenges the top-down approach, the centralized approach to development," said Paul Dragos Aligica, a former student of Ostrom's who is now a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
“她对自上而下、集中式的发展模式提出了质疑”，曾是奥斯特罗姆的学生、现在是乔治·梅森大学美国市场研究中心一名高级研究员的保罗·德拉格斯·阿里吉卡说。

Ostrom, who has collaborated frequently with her husband, Vincent, is in many ways a departure for the selection committee. She has done extensive fieldwork, analyzing situations all over the world, rather than building theoretical mathematical models. And her training was as a political scientist, not as an economist. She said at a news conference Monday that her work shows the importance of combining ideas from economics, political science, sociology and other fields.
对于评选委员会来说，选择奥斯特罗姆（她经常与丈夫文森特合作）从很多方面来说都是一次全新的尝试。她做了广泛的实地考察，分析了世界范围内的各种情形，而不是构建理论数学模型。而且她所受的是政治科学家的（专业）训练，而不是经济学家。她在周一的新闻发布会上说，她的著作展示了经济学、政治科学、社会学与其他学科思想结合的重要性。

"One of the most important factors is whether local people monitor each other," Ostrom said. "Not officials, locals. I'm not denigrating that officials can do something very positive. But what we have ignored is what citizens can do, and the importance of real involvement of the people involved as opposed to just having someone in Washington or at a far, far distance make a rule."
“一个最重要的因素是，当地人是否相互监督，”奥斯特罗姆说。“当地人，而非官员。我并非诽谤官员们不能做些很积极的事。但是我们忽视了公民所能做的，以及所涉及民众真实参与的重要性，而不是仅仅通过华盛顿或其他遥远地方的某个人来制定规则。”

Williamson has studied why businesses organize the way they do. He has explored questions of when and why economic interactions are more efficient within a firm as opposed to between two companies, and when firms might have a long-term business relationship rather than engage in one-off transactions. He worked for the Justice Department on antitrust matters in the 1960s, and his work has made a deep imprint on that area of law.
威廉姆森研究了企业采取其组织方式的原因，他探究了何时以及为什么经济的相互作用在一个商行内比在两个商行间更有效的问题，何时商行们会有一种长期贸易关系而不是从事一次性交易。19世纪60年代，他为反垄断司法部门工作过，他的著作已在那个法律领域产生了深刻影响。

"The most concrete and earliest problem he tackled is why do we see the organizational forms we do," said Scott Masten, an economist at the University of Michigan. Why, for example, do some firms buy supplies on the open market, others buy them through long-term contractual relationships, and still others have their suppliers of raw materials under the same corporate umbrella?
“他处理的最具体和最早的问题是，为什么我们看到的是这些我们所选择的组织形式，”密歇根大学经济学家斯科特·马斯滕说。比如，为什么一些商行在公开市场上购买物资，另外一些通过长期契约关系进行购买，还有另一些则是在同一企业机构之内取得原材料供应。

In 1967, the U.S. government accused the Schwinn bicycle company of anti-competitive behavior for refusing to sell to discount retailers and restricting its sales to independent franchisees that charged higher prices.
1967年，美国政府指控施温自行车公司犯有反竞争行为，因其拒绝向折扣零售商拒绝出售产品而只出售给独立的特许经营店，这些经营店（向消费者）收取的价格更高。

Williamson argued that contrary to the government's reasoning, there was an economic rationale to the behavior: Schwinn could ensure that those selling its products offered high-quality service, protecting the company's reputation. And that signing contracts with franchisees could be more efficient than operating stores itself.
与政府的说法相反，威廉姆森辩称，这一行为有其经济学依据：（通过仅限供应给特许经营店）施温可以确保那些产品销售的部门能提供高质服务，以保护公司声誉；并且与特许经营店签合约比自己经营商铺更有效率。

"If potential customers are told, 'I bought a Schwinn bike and it was a lemon,' but are not advised that the bicycle was bought from a discount house and misassembled . . . customer confidence in Schwinn is easily impaired," Williamson wrote in his 1998 book "The Economic Institutions of Capitalism."
“如果一名潜在的客户听说，‘我买了一辆施温自行车，那车真是差劲’，但是未被告知这辆自行车是从折扣商店买的，还存在组装不当的问题……顾客对施温的信心就容易受到损害，”威廉姆森在他1998年出版的《资本主义经济制度》一书中写道。

In time, antitrust authorities came to appreciate Williamson's logic, and a wide range of businesses now place restrictions on who can sell their products and how.
反垄断权威们及时前来领会威廉姆森的逻辑思想，现在各种各样的工商企业在向谁以及如何出售自身产品上都做出了限定。

"One thing that's underappreciated is that he was one of the primary contributors to transforming antitrust law and competition policy in the United States," said Barak Richman, a Duke Law professor who studied under Williamson.
“未得到充分评价的一件事是，他是在美国改变反垄断法和竞争政策的最主要贡献者之一，”曾师从威廉姆森的杜克大学法律教授巴拉克·里奇曼说。

diwent

数学模型到底还是理想化的状态。立足实际才能解决问题。。。。

zero9999

反正有点不像自由贸易了。

curiouspuppy

前者的理论可以解释为 布什不该拯救华尔街；后者的理论可以解释 为何中国会经过百年斗争而最终走上了中国特色社会主义道路。

总体看，诺奖经济评委潜意识里倾向于认为 应该让市场以绝对自由机制进行自我修复，而不是对危机的深化进行积极干预。

我觉得，中国真正潜心研究经济的学者完全能做出更卓著的成绩，因为中国人具有深入骨髓的辩证思想，因此能得出更全面更完善的理论。

wangyf315

诺奖现在都是垃圾。数理化相关的最高科技，都是国家绝密不会让人知道。经济学奖，都是骗人的西方经济鬼理论，和平奖？达赖、奥巴马都能得的奖。

wangyf315

文学奖？没有代表性，充斥偏见和优越感。