发帖
495 个论坛币
雷达卡
[相关阅读]
- IMF对诺奖得主Ken Arrow的介绍：Path Breaker
- 诺奖得主Joseph Stiglitz: 打造学习型社会 Creating a Learning Society
- 【压箱底系列】诺奖得主Joe Stiglitz新书:打造学习型社会Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress
- Speculation, Trading, and Bubbles (Kenneth J. Arrow Lecture Series)
Creating a Learning Society
Jun 3, 2014
NEW YORK – Citizens in the world’s richest countries have come to think of their economies as being based on innovation. But innovation has been part of the developed world’s economy for more than two centuries. Indeed, for thousands of years, until the Industrial Revolution, incomes stagnated. Then per capita income soared, increasing year after year, interrupted only by the occasional effects of cyclical fluctuations.
The Nobel laureate economist Robert Solow noted some 60 years ago that rising incomes should largely be attributed not to capital accumulation, but to technological progress – to learning how to do things better. While some of the productivity increase reflects the impact of dramatic discoveries, much of it has been due to small, incremental changes. And, if that is the case, it makes sense to focus attention on how societies learn, and what can be done to promote learning – including learning how to learn.
A century ago, the economist and political scientist Joseph Schumpeter argued that the central virtue of a market economy was its capacity to innovate. He contended that economists’ traditional focus on competitive markets was misplaced; what mattered was competition for the market, not competition in the market. Competition for the market drove innovation. A succession of monopolists would lead, in this view, to higher standards of living in the long run.
Schumpeter’s conclusions have not gone unchallenged. Monopolists and dominant firms, like Microsoft, can actually suppress innovation. Unless checked by anti-trust authorities, they can engage in anti-competitive behavior that reinforces their monopoly power.
Moreover, markets may not be efficient in either the level or direction of investments in research and learning. Private incentives are not well aligned with social returns: firms can gain from innovations that increase their market power, enable them to circumvent regulations, or channel rents that would otherwise accrue to others.
But one of Schumpeter’s fundamental insights has held up well: Conventional policies focusing on short-run efficiency may not be desirable, once one takes a long-run innovation/learning perspective. This is especially true for developing countries and emerging markets.
Industrial policies – in which governments intervene in the allocation of resources among sectors or favor some technologies over others – can help “infant economies” learn. Learning may be more marked in some sectors (such as industrial manufacturing) than in others, and the benefits of that learning, including the institutional development required for success, may spill over to other economic activities.
Such policies, when adopted, have been frequent targets of criticism. Government, it is often said, should not be engaged in picking winners. The market is far better in making such judgments.
But the evidence on that is not as compelling as free-market advocates claim. America’s private sector was notoriously bad in allocating capital and managing risk in the years before the global financial crisis, while studies show that average returns to the economy from government research projects are actually higher than those from private-sector projects – especially because the government invests more heavily in important basic research. One only needs to think of the social benefits traceable to the research that led to the development of the Internet or the discovery of DNA.
But, putting such successes aside, the point of industrial policy is not to pick winners at all. Rather, successful industrial policies identify sources of positive externalities – sectors where learning might generate benefits elsewhere in the economy.
Viewing economic policies through the lens of learning provides a different perspective on many issues. The great economist Kenneth Arrow emphasized the importance of learning by doing. The only way to learn what is required for industrial growth, for example, is to have industry. And that may require either ensuring that one’s exchange rate is competitive or that certain industries have privileged access to credit – as a number of East Asian countries did as part of their remarkably successful development strategies.
There is a compelling infant economy argument for industrial protection. Moreover, financial-market liberalization may undermine countries’ ability to learn another set of skills that are essential for development: how to allocate resources and manage risk.
Likewise, intellectual property, if not designed properly, can be a two-edged sword when viewed from a learning perspective. While it may enhance incentives to invest in research, it may also enhance incentives for secrecy – impeding the flow of knowledge that is essential to learning while encouraging firms to maximize what they draw from the pool of collective knowledge and to minimize what they contribute. In this scenario, the pace of innovation is actually reduced.
More broadly, many of the policies (especially those associated with the neoliberal “Washington Consensus”) foisted on developing countries with the noble objective of promoting the efficiency of resource allocation today actually impede learning, and thus lead to lower standards of living in the long run.
Virtually every government policy, intentionally or not, for better or for worse, has direct and indirect effects on learning. Developing countries where policymakers are cognizant of these effects are more likely to close the knowledge gap that separates them from the more developed countries. Developed countries, meanwhile, have an opportunity to narrow the gap between average and best practices, and to avoid the danger of secular stagnation.
打造学习型社会
纽约—最发达国家的公民已开始认为他们的经济建立在创新的基础上。但创新成为发达世界经济的一部分已有两个多世纪的历史。事实上，几千年来，直到工业革命前，收入一直处于停滞状态。工业革命后，人均收入开始激增，一年更比一年高，只是时常会受到周期性波动的干扰。
60年前，诺贝尔经济学奖获得者罗伯特·索洛（Robert Solow）指出，收入的提高主要不是来自资本积累，而是来自技术进步——即学习如何将事情做得更好。尽管生产率的提高部分反映了重大发现的影响，但大部分都要归因于渐进的小变革。果真如此的话，就应该将注意力集中在社会如何学习以及如何促进学习上——包括学习如何学习。
一个世纪前，经济学家兼政治学家约瑟夫·熊彼特（Joseph Schumpeter）指出，市场经济的最大好处是其创新能力。他认为，传统上经济学家关注竞争市场，这是个错误；真正重要的是为创造市场而竞争，而不是在市场中竞争。为创造市场而竞争推动了创新。根据这一观点，从长期看，前赴后继的垄断者能带来生活水平的提高。
熊彼特的结论受到了挑战。垄断者和主导且——如微软等——实际上可能抑制创新。除非受到反垄断当局制约，否则它们可能采取反竞争行为以强化垄断力。
此外，市场在决定研究和学习投资水平或方向方面未必有效。私人激励与社会回报并不完美匹配：企业可以从增强器市场实力的创新中获益，使它们能够绕过监管或将本可能流向他人的租引导到自己囊中。
但熊彼特的一个基本洞见是成立的：从长期创新/学习角度看，关注短期效率的传统政策或许并不值得追求。对于发展中国家和新兴市场而言尤其如此。
产业政策——ZF干预资源在各部门间的配置或优待某些技术——有助于“婴儿经济体”（infant economy）学习。一些部门（如工业生产部门）的学习可能会胜过其他部门，而学习的好处，包括成功所必须的制度发展——可能溢出到其他经济活动中。
当采取这些政策时，往往会招来批评。人们常说，ZF不应该主动去挑选赢家。在这方面，市场的判断要好得多。
但这方面的证据并不如自由市场鼓吹者宣称的那样令人信服。美国私人部门在全球金融危机前几年的配置资本和管理风险水平之低已是众所周知，而研究表明，经济得自ZF研究项目的平均回报其实要高于私人部门项目——特别是因为ZF投资更偏向重要的基础研究。只要想一想催生了互联网的发展和DNA的发现的研究就能一窥端倪。
但是，除却这些成功不谈，产业政策的要点决非挑选赢家。相反，成功的产业政策要识别具有正外部性的资源——即本部门学习可能给经济的其他部门带来好处的部门。
从学习的角度看待经济政策让我们能用不同的目光审视许多问题。著名经济学家肯尼斯·阿罗（Kenneth Arrow）强调干中学（learning by doing）的重要性。比如，学习产业成长的必要基础的唯一办法是拥有该产业。而这需要有高竞争力的汇率或者某些产业拥有获得信用的特权——这正是许多东亚国家取得巨大成功的发展战略的要点。
婴儿经济体有一个很强大的产业保护理由。此外，金融市场自由化可能破坏一国学习发展所必须的技能组合的能力，即如何配置资源和管理风险。
类似地，知识产权如能得到合理设计，可以成为学习角度看来的双刃剑。它能够强化研究投资激励，但也可能强化保密激励——阻止学习的关键知识的流动并鼓励企业尽可能在集体知识总量中占取最大份额、贡献最小力量。在这一情形中，创新的速度实际上可能受到削弱。
更广地看，许多打着促进当今资源配置效率的冠冕堂皇的口号强加给发展中国家的政策（特别是与新自由主义“华盛顿共识”相关的政策）实际上在阻碍学习，从而导致长期生活水平下降。
几乎所有ZF政策——不管有意还是无意，好还是差——都会对学习造成直接和间接的影响。决策者认识到这一影响的发展中国家更有可能弥补让它们与发达国家产生区别的知识差距。与此同时，发达国家有机会缩小一般实践和最佳实践之间的差别，避免长期停滞的危险。
原文地址：http://www.project-syndicate.org ... ing-countries-alike
我发过的部分帖子：
资深业内人士推荐的10本交易书（附下载链接）Top Ten Trading Books I Have Read
2014年度英国《金融时报》最佳商业图书书单（附下载链接）
福布斯：史上最好的20条投资建议 The Best Investment Advice Of All Time （附链接）
【查理芒格系列】Charlie Munger 推荐的20本书！（附下载链接）
【西蒙系列】跨学科旅行家: 赫伯特 西蒙 （Herbert Simon）资料汇总帖
[专题系列] 量化投资大师詹姆斯·西蒙斯 James Simons 资料汇总帖
[专题系列] Barra模型-RiskMetrics (RMA)-PMA资料（持续更新）
[专题系列] 主动投资与被动投资（active vs. passive），到底哪个更厉害？（免费！）
[原创] 浅析动量因子（附带Matlab/SAS程序及经典文献85篇，全部免费）
[原创] 如何复制对冲基金的成功？（hedge fund replication，附免费文献下载）
[原创] 对于目前流行的量化投资与smart beta策略的一些看法 （附免费文献10篇）
提升卡
置顶卡
沉默卡
变色卡
抢沙发
千斤顶
显身卡
京公网安备 11010802022788号
