【经济学人111112】出口到火星--官方数据很可能夸大了全球经常账户失衡

baby60

【中文标题】出口到火星--官方数据很可能夸大了全球经常账户失衡

【原文标题】Exportsto Mars--Officialstatistics probably exaggerate global current-account imbalances

【登载媒体】经济学人

【来源地址】 http://www.economist.com/node/21538100

【译者】baby60

【翻译方式】人工

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【原文库连接】http://bbs.m4.cn/thread-3238630-1-1.html

【译文】

ECONOMISTS are constantly urging governments to adopt policies that would reduce global imbalances—which, in crude terms, means that China should slash its current-account surplus and America its deficit. Yet they ignore the biggest imbalance of all: the current-account surplus that planet Earth appears to run with extraterrestrials. In theory, countries’ current-account balances should all sum to zero because one country’s export is another’s import. However, if you add up all countries’ reported current-account transactions (exports minus imports of goods and services, net investment income, workers’ remittances and other transfers), the world exported $331 billion more than it imported in 2010, according to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook. The fund forecasts that the global current-account surplus will rise to almost $700 billion by 2014.

《经济学人》经常催促政府制定政策以减少全球失衡，大致上说就是中国应该削减其经常账户上的贸易顺差而美国则应减少其赤字。但他们忽略了其中最大的失衡点：地球对外星的经常账户上的贸易顺差。从理论上说，各个国家的经常账户余额总和应为0.因为一国的出国就相当于另一国的进口。但是如果你加总所有国家给出的经常账户报表(出口减去进口的商品和服务，净投资收益，工人汇款以及其他资产转移)，根据国际货币基金组织的《世界经济展望》得出2010年全球出口额多出进口额3310亿美元。根据这笔资金预估，到2014年全球经常账户顺差会涨到近7000亿美元。

Are aliens buying Louis Vuitton handbags? Are little green men bagging the best sunbeds by the hotel pool? The more down-to-earth explanation is that the global surplus reflects statistical errors. Either the current-account deficits of countries such as America are being understated or the surpluses of countries like China are being overstated, and by a rising amount.

难道是外星人买了LV包吗？还是小绿怪订走了酒店泳池旁最好的太阳浴床？更现实一点的解释是：全球贸易顺差反映出了统计错误--不是像美国这样的国家贸易逆差被少报了，就是像中国这样的国家贸易顺差被高估了，而且是被大大的高估了。
The puzzle is compounded by the fact that the world ran a persistent current-account deficit for at least three decades until 2005. In 2001 the deficit was equivalent to 0.5% of global GDP, but by next year the IMF’s forecasts imply that the surplus could hit a record 0.8% of GDP (see left-hand chart). That turnaround exceeds the increase in China’s current-account surplus over the same period. Indeed, the global “surplus” now exceeds China’s.令人不解的事实是，2005年之前，全球经常账户赤字持续了至少30年。2001年赤字数相当于全球GDP的0.5%，但国际货币基金组织预测到了下一年，贸易顺差就会达到GDP的0.8%（见上图左侧）。这个突变超过了中国同一时期经常账户的盈余。事实上，全球的盈余现在也超过中国的。A statistical black hole of this scale raises questions about the IMF’s forecast that global external imbalances will rise over the coming years. It expects China’s current-account surplus to double in dollar terms between 2010 and 2014. A forecast increase in China’s surplus ought to mean a bigger deficit elsewhere. Yet the fund also expects the rest of the world combined to run a rising surplus (this includes a big drop in America’s deficit).这种规模的统计黑洞使人们对IMF预测的全球失衡将会在未来几年上升提出疑问。它预计中国的顺差从2010到2014将会翻倍（以美元计算）。中国顺差期望的增加意味着其它某个国家更多的赤字。然而其它国家加总起来居然也是预计会有增大的盈余（包括美国赤字的大幅度减少）。What is going on? Past studies by the IMF concluded that the global deficit in the 1980s and 1990s was largely due to the underreporting of foreign-investment income by rich countries and the under-recording of freight receipts. But over the past decade, the “deficit” on investment income has diminished, partly because governments have cracked down on tax evasion and partly because interest rates have fallen. An IMF study in 2009, by Marco Terrones and Thomas Helbling, concluded that the biggest cause of the switch from a global current-account deficit to a surplus was mismeasurement of services. International trade in financial and legal services, insurance and consultancy is tricky to measure, and exporters are easier to identify than importers. For instance, law firms involved in cross-border deals are usually quite large, whereas most clients’ spending on their services is relatively small (though it may not seem that way to the clients). Exporters are thus more likely than importers to exceed the threshold for inclusion in the surveys used to track trade in services.这是怎么回事呢？过去IMF的研究得到论断表明，在80年代和90年代全球贸易赤字主要是由于富裕国家低报外商投资收入和货运收据造成的。但是近些年，这些投资收益上的赤字减少了，一部分是由于政府打击逃税，另外一部分是由于利率下降了。2009年，IMF由Marco Terrones和 Thomas Helbling研究推断，造成全球贸易由逆转顺最大的原因是漏算了服务额。国际金融和法律服务、保险和咨询这些服务费很难去计算，并且出口商要比进口商易于界定。例如，大多数律师事务所涉及的跨境交易量都比较大，而其客户在他们服务上的开支则相对小。因此出口商比进口商更有可能超过包括调查跟进服务额的临界值。Since that report, however, measurement errors in merchandise trade have jumped and now match those in services (see right-hand chart). Transport lags can cause annual global exports to exceed imports when trade is growing rapidly because goods in transit in December are counted as exports by China, say, but are not counted as imports by America until January. But this cannot account for the scale of the recent rise in the statistical discrepancy because growth in trade has slowed since 2007.然而自那个报告后，商品贸易的量度误差却大幅增大，现已可及服务类的误差（见上图右侧）。当贸易快速增长时传输延迟会导致每年度全球出口超过进口，比如，12月份的在途商品被视为中国的出口，但是直到下一年1月才会被视作是美国的进口。但是这并不能解释最近这种规模的统计误差的增加，因为自2007年以来，贸易增长已经放慢脚步。Another possible explanation posits that the surge in the global discrepancy broadly coincides with both the explosion in vertically integrated businesses, where firms locate different stages of production in different countries, and the increase in China’s trade. A rising share of trade consists of parts, semi-finished goods and final products moving across borders between parent companies and their foreign subsidiaries. In 2009 intra-firm trade accounted for half of America’s imports. Transfer pricing used by multinationals to shift profits around the globe may distort trade figures. Much of this mispricing of exports and imports should cancel out, but probably not all.另一个可能的解释是，这种全球误差大致与垂直整合的企业激增以及中国的贸易增加相一致，这些企业将产品的不同生产阶段定位在不同国家。上升的贸易份额包括零部件、半成品和最终产品跨越国界在母公司和子公司间流转。2009年，公司内部贸易占了美国进口额的一半。跨国公司为了转移利润在全球的转让定价会扭曲贸易数据。大部分这些出口和进口上的错误定价应该抵消掉了，但可能不是全部。

More science, less fictionOverinvoicing of imports and underinvoicing of exports by American multinationals trying to reduce their tax bills would mean that America’s true current-account deficit is smaller than officially reported. That would increase, not reduce, the global discrepancy. But under- or over invoicing of trade within international firms is also used to dodge capital controls. A decade ago firms in emerging economies often reported exports at less than their value or imports at more, to shift money out of a country like China. In recent years, however, China’s booming economy and the expected appreciation of the yuan mean that exporters now have more incentive to overinvoice exports in order to bring money into the country. If so, official figures may overstate the surplus of China and other emerging economies.

多科学，少科幻美国的跨国公司中，进口商要求出口商开高价发票和出口商为逃税开低价发票这些行为意味着美国世纪的经常账户赤字比官方数据要小。这些将增加而不是减少全球的数据误差。但这种方式还是被跨国公司用来躲避资本管制。十几年前，新兴经济体，为了从中国这样的国家转出资金，经常尽可能多的把出口报少而把进口报多。然而近年来由于中国经济的蓬勃发展和人民币升值预期，出口商更倾向于开高出口发票以将更多的钱放入中国。如果是这样，官方数据很可能就夸大了中国和其它新兴经济体的账户顺差。

To understand whether global imbalances really are widening or not, you need to know where the errors lie. Rich countries’ trade statistics tend to be more reliable than those of emerging economies, where data collection is less developed. If more of the mismeasurement is in the emerging world, the total current-account surplus of emerging markets is probably much smaller than that officially recorded. Zhiwei Zhang, an economist at Nomura, estimates that measurement errors caused by underrecorded profits of foreign firms and capital flows disguised as trade flows may have inflated China’s current-account surplus by 3-4 percentage points (last year’s surplus was 5% of GDP).

要了解全球经济失衡是否真的在扩大，你需要知道错误出在哪里。富国的贸易统计比那些数据采集欠发达的新兴经济体会更可靠。如果更多的测量误差存在于那些新兴经济体，那么新兴经济体的经常账户盈余就会比官方数据小很多。野村证券的经济学家Zhiwei Zhang估计那些由于低报外国公司利润和将资产流动虚报成贸易流动的计量错误使得中国经常账户的顺差膨胀了3%-4%（去年的顺差为GDP的5%）。

The good news is that international concerns about global imbalances may be much less pressing than many think. The bad news is that conventional balance-of-payments measures are clearly less reliable in a world of rising intra-firm trade and complex supply chains. That matters because dodgy statistics lead to policy mistakes. Governments should clean the figures up.

好消息是，国际上对全球失衡的担忧要比很多人认为的少的多。而坏消息是，由于现今世界公司内部贸易激增、供应链体系复杂，传统的计量国际收支平衡的手段显然已不够可靠了。它影响着各国因为统计误差会造成制定政策的错误。统计数据值得政府净化。

zbyysnow

看不懂.说了好多，路过，Giel点面子

baby60

zbyysnow 发表于 2011-11-16 16:57
看不懂.说了好多，路过，Giel点面子

面子。。