金融业的薪水或将下降

Say the words "banker pay" to your average voter or politician and these days you will hear an angry hiss. After all, nothing stirs up so much resentment against modern capitalism as the sight of financiers still reaping fat rewards despite failing institutions. On Sunday, the public outrage at Stephen Hester's bonus persuaded the Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive to turn down a pay award (£1m) that would be considered miserly by other bank bosses in the UK and the US.

如今若与普通选民或政客谈论“银行家的薪酬”，你总能听到愤怒的嘘声。毕竟，没有什么比看到金融家们在金融机构濒临倒闭时仍能拿到丰厚的薪酬更能激起人们对现代资本主义的憎恨了。上周日，苏格兰皇家银行(RBS)行政总裁斯蒂芬•赫斯特(Stephen Hester)在公愤的压力之下，决定放弃一笔100万英镑的奖金——尽管在其他英美银行的老板看来，这笔奖金简直少得可怜。 

However, is it possible to imagine a world where banking pay — and banking — is radically slimmed down? Anybody living in countries such as Japan or Sweden would undoubtedly say "yes"; in those economies, foreign financiers' salaries appear bloated. But perhaps a more interesting — and relevant — intellectual exercise is to peer at the US through a long historical lens; to imagine, if you like, a banking pay version of Back to the Future.

然而，我们能够想象一个银行业薪酬和银行业规模大幅缩水的世界吗？日本或瑞典等国的居民无疑会给出肯定的回答；在那些经济体的居民看来，外国金融家的薪酬实属虚高。不过，一个更有意思、也更有意义的思考或许是，在较长的时间尺度上对美国的情况进行审视。如果你愿意的话，可以把它看作一部“银行业薪酬版”的《回到未来》(Back to the Future)。

Take a look, for example, at the work by Thomas Philippon and Ariell Reshef, two US-based economists. They have researched trends in banker pay over the past 150 years and found that, in the early 20th century, financial sector pay relative to the rest of the private sector was roughly at parity (for, crucially, employees with similar levels of education). But then it rose sharply until it hit 1.7 times in 1929, the year of the Wall Street crash.

例如，我们可以读一下两位现居美国的经济学家托马斯•菲利蓬(Thomas Philippon)和阿里尔•雷谢夫(Ariell Reshef)的著作。他们对过去150年银行家薪酬变化的趋势进行了研究，结果发现：在20世纪初，金融业和私营部门其他行业支付给具有相似教育程度（这一点很关键）的员工的薪酬大体相当。但接下来，金融业薪酬就大幅上升，到华尔街崩盘的1929年，达到了其他行业的1.7倍。

That echoed a bigger increase in finance: the total cost of financial intermediation (all wages and profits paid to financial firms) had reached 6 per cent in 1930, up from just 2 per cent in 1870, according to separate research that Mr Philippon recently showed to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

这一上升与金融领域一项幅度更大的上升相呼应：菲利蓬最近提交给纽约联储(Federal Reserve Bank of New York)的另一份研究报告显示，金融中介的总成本（支付给金融机构的全部薪酬和利润）在1870年仅为2%，在1930年则上升到了6%。 

After the 1929 crash, this trend did not immediately reverse: for several years, financial pay remained high because pay in other parts of the economy fell and some bankers traded cannily during and after the crash. However, in the late 1930s the ratio slumped back towards parity and stayed there for the subsequent three decades; in the years following the second world war, American bankers were paid roughly the same as other professionals. But from the the late 1970s onwards, a new cycle turned: the total cost of financial intermediation jumped to 9 per cent in 2010 from 4 per cent in 1950. The ratio of financial sector pay to pay in the rest of the private sector hit 1.7 times in 2006 – in a delicious irony, the same level as in 1929.

1929年崩盘后，这个趋势并未立即扭转，随后的若干年里，金融业薪酬仍然很高。这是因为，美国经济其他领域的薪酬都已下降，而且在崩盘期间和之后，一些银行家做的交易很精明。但在20世纪30年代末，金融业与其他行业薪酬之比又回落至1:1附近，并在之后的30年里维持在这一水平；二战结束后的几年里，美国银行家薪酬与其他专业人士大致相当。但20世纪70年代末以来，我们又迎来了一个新的周期：金融中介总成本从1950年的4%跃升至2010年的9%；金融业薪酬在2006年达到了私营部门其他行业薪酬的1.7倍——颇有讽刺意味的是，这个水平与1929年相同。