中国央行官员新书挑战西方经济学
孝道等亚洲社会价值观和国企等机构，是否掌握着诊断出主流经济学理论缺陷的钥匙?正是这些缺陷导致大多数经济学家无法预测到2008年的金融危机。
This is the provocative claim advanced by Chinese central bank official Wang Zhenying in his ambitious new book, Principles of Transactional Economics, published last year by China Financial Publishing House.
这就是中国央行官员王振营(见上图)在他那本雄心勃勃的新书《交易经济学原理》中提出的争议性看法。该书去年由中国金融出版社出版。
The financial crisis has spawned a wide array of critiques of mainstream economics, but Mr Wang’s comes from a distinctly Chinese perspective.
金融危机使主流经济学遭到了广泛批评，但王振营的批评出自一种独特的中国视角。
At a book talk at the People’s Bank of China’s Shanghai headquarters, Mr Wang brought Chinese translations of western economics’ cornerstone texts — Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, Alfred Marshall’s Principles of Economics, John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, and Paul Samuelson’s seminal 1948 textbook — to illustrate his points.
在中国央行上海总部的一场图书介绍会上，王振营引用西方经济学经典文本——亚当•斯密(Adam Smith)的《国富论》(The Wealth of Nations)、艾尔弗雷德•马歇尔(Alfred Marshall)的《经济学原理》(Principles of Economics)、约翰•梅纳德•凯恩斯(John Maynard Keynes)的《就业、利息和货币通论》(The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money)和保罗•萨缪尔森(Paul Samuelson)于1948年出版的影响巨大的教科书——的中文译本来证明他的观点。
“Mainstream economists didn’t believe the world was in crisis (in 2007 and early 2008). The core issue was our theoretical framework, whose foundation was established at the beginning of the industrial revolution. It’s an extremely simple framework,” said the soft-spoken Mr Wang, who joined the PBoC in 1994 and currently serves as head of director of the survey and statistics department at the PBoC’s Shanghai headquarters.
“(在2007年和2008年初，)主流经济学家不相信世界处于危机之中。核心问题在于我们的理论框架，这一框架的基础是在工业革命之初建立的。这是一个极端简单的框架，”语气柔和的王振营说。他于1994年加入中国央行(PBoC)，目前担任上海总部调查统计研究部主任。
Mr Wang entered university in 1979 at age 16, a member of the third student cohort following the end of the Cultural Revolution, when merit-based university admissions were halted. He is among the first students of mainstream western economics following an era in which Chinese scholars only studied Marxism.
1979年，16岁的王振营考入大学，成为文革后第三批大学生。文革期间，中国的大学不再基于分数录取学生。在他入学之前，中国经历了一个学者只研究马克思主义的时期，而他是这一时期过后第一批攻读主流西方经济学的学生之一。
His critique is informed by his experience growing up in a rural family in Henan province in the 1960s and 1970s. He recalled a spanking from his mother when, as a boy of six, he took his dinner from the stove before his older brother and uncle had come in from working in the fields. It was the first inkling of an economic theory that aims to take account of variables like self-sacrifice for family, which undermines mainstream economics’ conception of individuals as selfish utility maximisers.
他的批评基于他上世纪六七十年代在河南一个农村家庭长大的经历。他回忆起6岁时被母亲打屁股的情形——在田间干活的哥哥和大人还没回来，他就把饭从炉子上拿起来吃。一套旨在将类似“对家庭的自我牺牲”等变量考虑在内的经济学理论，就在那时第一次显露痕迹。这一经济学理论颠覆了主流经济学的这一观念：人是自私的，追求效用最大化。
“There have been many criticisms of mainstream economics and many proposed solutions. But they’re all basically fixes to the existing theoretical framework. They aren’t fundamentally new theoretical system, so they can’t really solve the problem.”
“人们对主流经济学一直有很多批评，很多人提出了解决方案。但这些方案基本上都是对现有理论框架的修修补补，并非全新的理论体系，所以不可能真正解决问题。”
Mr Wang’s first critique of mainstream economics is that it posits the existence of undifferentiated economic actors — households and companies — that respond almost exclusively to price signals. This framework theory does not account for differences in how various actors make economic decisions.
王振营对主流经济学的第一项批评是，它假定存在无差别的经济行为主体——家庭和企业——这些主体几乎仅对价格信号作出反应。这个框架理论没能解释不同行为主体做出经济决策的方式的不同。
Mr Wang criticises mainstream economics for neglecting the importance of balance sheets. Because each household and company has a unique balance sheet, they will not respond to price signals in the same way.
王振营批评主流经济学忽视了资产负债表的重要性。因为每个家庭和企业都有独特的资产负债表，它们不会以相同方式回应价格信号。
“Classical economics talked about the accumulation of wealth and how value was created. But neoclassical theory took this huge and complex theory and simplified down it into a narrow focus on prices. Prices have a core status. Everyone knows prices are important, but they’re not everything.”
“古典经济学讨论了财富的积累，以及价值的创造方式。但是新古典理论接收了这个庞杂的理论，并将其简化为对价格的狭隘关注。价格占据了核心地位。每个人都知道价格很重要，但价格不是一切。”
His focus on balance sheets echoes Nomura economist Richard Koo’s theory of the balance-sheet recession.” Mr Koo used the theory to explain why highly indebted Japanese companies declined to borrow and invest in the 1990s, despite ultra-low interest rates.
他对资产负债表的关注与野村(Nomura)经济学家辜朝明(Richard Koo)的资产负债表衰退理论相吻合。辜朝明用这个理论解释了，为何高负债的日本企业在上世纪90年代拒绝借款和投资，尽管那时利率极低。
Substituting the concept of “economic actors” for that of “transactional bodies” can form the basis for a theory that can account for variables not captured in mainstream economics. That includes not only balance sheets, but also differences in market power between different entities, including government and large corporations.
将“经济行为主体”的概念替换为“交易主体”的概念，可以为一种能够解释主流经济学未包含变量的理论奠定基础。这些变量不仅包括资产负债表，而且包括不同实体(包括政府和大企业)在市场力量方面的差异。
Another blind spot in mainstream economics appeared to Mr Wang in the 1990s, as he observed the way Chinese state-owned enterprises continued to produce and sell, despite racking up huge losses.
上世纪90年代，王振营发现了主流经济学的另一个盲点，当时他观察到了尽管亏损巨大且不断加重，但中国国企继续生产和销售的情况。
The answer, of course, was that banks continued to lend to lossmaking SOEs, who had a political responsibility to maintain employment and social stability. This problem has re-emerged in recent years, after the government again called on SOEs to stimulate the economy in 2008.
个中原因当然是银行继续对亏损的国企放贷，这些国企肩负着维持就业和社会稳定的政治责任。继中国政府2008年又一次呼吁国企刺激经济发展之后，这个问题近年来再次出现。
While mainstream economics cannot account for this behaviour in terms of profit or market share maximisation, his theory’s focus on the special characteristics of various transactional bodies allows it to explain economic behaviour in centrally planned economies.
主流经济学无法从利润或市场份额最大化的角度解释这种行为，而王振营的理论对不同交易主体特殊属性的关注，使它可以解释中央计划经济中的经济行为。
