经济学人下载:自由交易 巨人

Finance and economics
财经商业

Free exchange
自由交易

One of the giants
巨人

Ronald Coase, the economist who explained why firms exist, died on September 2nd, aged 102
罗纳德科斯，著名经济学家，于9月2日逝世，享年102岁。他向世人阐明了企业存在原因。

I HAVE made no innovations in high theory, was how Ronald Coase modestly summed up his life's work.
罗纳德科斯如是总结他一生的事业：在高层理论研究中，我并没有创新。

My contribution to economics has been to urge the inclusion…of features of the economic system so obvious that…they have tended to be overlooked.
我对经济领域的贡献在于，将甄选经济指标这一步骤引入人们视野，而之前，人们对此并不重视。

Attention to the overlooked helped Mr Coase transform both law and economics.
而正是他对这一被忽视的步骤的注意使得他改变了法律与经济。

Born in the London suburb of Willesden in 1910 to working-class parents,
1910年，罗纳德科斯出生在伦敦威尔斯登的一个工人家庭，

Mr Coase had an academic temperament and an interest in science but lacked a taste for mathematics, a flaw that might have kept him out of economics in later decades.
他很有学术天赋，对于科学也很有兴趣，遗憾的是他缺少对数学的尝试，也许这就是使得他在接下来的十年中无缘经济的原因。

He studied commerce at the London School of Economics, a course tailored to those destined for middle management.
科斯在伦敦经济学院学习贸易，这一学科是给将来的中层管理者量身定做的。

The degree included instruction in economics, and he quickly fell for the dismal science.
该学科包含了经济介绍，科斯很快便迷上了政治经济。

A one-year travelling scholarship gave him the chance to apply what he had learned.
一年的旅行奖金给予了科斯将所学应用于实践的机会，

He chose to tour America's industrial cities in the hope of answering a question that troubled him:
他来到美国工业城市，希望能在这找到一直困扰他的问题：

why did companies exist?
企业为何存在。

Economists of the time were enthralled by the special magic of the price mechanism.
时下的经济学家都被价格机制的神奇魔力吸引。

In a free market, prices should adjust to allocate resources where they are most valued.
在自由市场，通过价格的变动来分配资源，使尽其用。

A certain price for wool, for example, encourages farmers to raise sheep and bring wool to market to meet consumer demand.
例如，如果羊毛价格高，农民就会更多的喂养羊群，将羊毛销往市场以满足需求。

As more is produced and demand is sated the price falls, discouraging farmers from wasting time and resources producing unwanted goods.
当生产的羊毛越来越多，需求被不断满足，价格就会下降，这就使农民减少生产，避免将时间跟精力浪费在非需商品上。

Yet whereas some parts of the economy rely on prices to guide materials and labour to their best uses, others do not.
经济在某些方面依靠价格来引导资源和劳力发挥最大作用，而其他方面又并非如此。

Within firms tasks are doled out by fiat and strategies are set by the Politburo of the corporate board. Mr Coase wanted to know why.
在企业里，高层向下布置任务，企业董事会制定政策。科斯想知道为什么是这样的模式。

As he watched American car plants in action, he realised that the existence of the firm compensated for a critical flaw in the price-setting mechanism.
就在科斯观察美国汽车工厂运行时，他意识到企业的存在正好弥补了价格生成机制中最严重的漏洞。

In the real world it is often costly for buyer and seller to arrive at a final price.
现实生活中，让买家跟商家达成最后的交易价格很费力。

Transaction costs, like the need to negotiate or draw up contracts, prevent the price mechanism from working smoothly.
交易成本，例如协商，签合同，这些都会使价格机制无法平稳运行。

Firms would exist, he reckoned, when it was cheaper and easier to co-ordinate activity within a centrally planned organisation than to spell out contract details for every step in the production process.
科斯猜想，当在一个有中心规划的机构里，协调各部门行动比在生产过程中为每一步都签订详细合同的成本更低更便捷，企业就出现了。

Mr Coase first presented his proposition in a lecture in Dundee in 1932, at the tender age of 21.
科斯首次提出这样的主张是他1932年在英国敦堤的一次演讲中，当时他才21岁。

In 1937 he published The Nature of the Firm, an article based on the Dundee lecture.
1937年，他以在敦堤的演讲为基础出版了《企业的性质》。

An entire field of research would eventually be built on this paper, but it garnered scant attention at first.
后来整个领域的研究都是以科斯在敦堤的演讲内容为基础，只是一开始并未引起很多人的注意。

Mr Coase bounced around British academia in the 1930s and 1940s, from Dundee to Liverpool and back to the LSE, researching the workings of public utilities as he went.
上个世纪30跟40年代，科斯在英国学术界十分活跃，从敦堤到利物浦，然后又回到伦敦经济学院，科斯一路研究公共事业公司的运行机制。

In 1951 he migrated to America and proved similarly itinerant, until an article on radio-spectrum property rights caught the eye of scholars at the University of Chicago.
1951年，他移民到美国，并不断地继续证明类似的理论，直到射频频谱的知识产权一文的发表才吸引了芝加哥大学学者们的眼球。

In 1959 he was invited to Chicago to air his views.
1959年，科斯受邀到芝加哥去阐明他的观点，

His audience included future Nobel prizewinners like George Stigler and Milton Friedman:
底下的观众包括像未来诺贝尔得奖者乔治·施蒂格勒，弥尔顿·弗里德曼。

confident, room-commanding men sceptical of Mr Coase's conclusions.
他们自信对科斯的结论表示怀疑。

Over the course of a two-hour discussion the measured Mr Coase won them around.
在两个小时的讨论之后，科斯终于得到他们的认可。

He was asked to write up his arguments and in 1961 produced The Problem of Social Cost, another landmark text.
科斯尽数写下他的观点，并于1961年出版了另一代表作《社会成本问题》。

By 1964 Mr Coase was on the University of Chicago's faculty.
从1964年起，科斯一直在芝加哥大学任教。

His debates with the Chicago academics centred on market externalities:
科斯与芝加哥的学者们围绕市场外部性进行了讨论：

economic choices that impose social costs or benefits on others.
经济选择会带来利益或需要社会成本。

Factory pollution may disturb or poison nearby residents, for example.
例如，工厂污染会影响或者危害周围的居民。

Earlier generations of economists diagnosed a market failure that governments could set to rights.
以往的经济学家得出政府能调整市场失败的结论。

The polluting factory does not face any costs from spouting black smoke over a town: the costs are external from its perspective.
污染性工厂对于向城镇释放黑烟的成本表示无压力，因为这个成本在他们的估算外。

A tax on pollution would internalise the cost, however.
但是征收污染税能将这个成本内部化，

The price mechanism would work once more, as the tax encouraged the factory's managers to reduce pollution to socially optimal levels.
于是价格机制再一次生效，因为税收能迫使工厂管理者将污染物的排放减少到社会最优水平。

Mr Coase's work suggested another answer.
科斯的成果又暗示了另一个结论。

In the world of theory, without transaction costs, no government intervention would be needed to address externalities.
理论上说，如果没有交易成本，就不需要政府干预来强调外部性。

The factory owners and the residents could work out side-payments on their own.
工厂拥有者跟居民他们自己就能达成赔偿协议，

Residents might pay the factory to emit less or the factory might pay the town for leeway to pollute more.
居民能弥补工厂，让他们少排放，工厂也能赔偿给居民，使自己多排放，

Either way an efficient outcome should result without government help. This Panglossian view became known as the Coase Theorem.
其中任一有效的办法都不需要政府的帮助。这种趋于至善的观点就变成了科斯理论。

Yet Mr Coase himself recognised life is more complex than theory.
但是科斯本人也意识到现实远比理论复杂。

Neither private bargaining nor a pollution tax can make a market perfectly efficient given transaction costs like the expense of monitoring a factory's emissions.
如果考虑到像监控工厂排放这样的交易成本，不管是私下解决或者立法征税，都不能使市场最有效。

Mr Coase reckoned the law had a critical economic responsibility: to minimise the disruptive effect of these costs on markets.
于是科斯想到法律负很大的经济责任：法律能最小化交易成本对市场的负面影响。

A system of clear and easily transferable property rights can play a role like that of the firm, allowing useful economic activity to take place that might otherwise be gummed up by the hassle of negotiating and enforcing contracts.
一个清晰并且容易转让的产权体系能扮演一个类似企业这样的角色，它可以保证那些可能被协商跟强加协议弄砸但其实有利可寻的经济活动的正常进行。

His insight revolutionised policy.
科斯这般的洞察力使政策发生了变革。

Tradable emissions permits, which helped eliminate acid rain as an environmental problem in America, are a direct application of his work.
可议的排放许可就是科斯理论成果最直接的应用，这项应用帮助降低了美国酸雨这样的环境问题。

Almost 70 years after that first Dundee lecture Mr Coase won the Nobel prize for economics.
大概在科斯第一次敦堤演讲70年后，他获得了诺贝尔经济学奖。

A scholar must be content with the knowledge that what is false in what he says will soon be exposed, he noted in his speech.
他在他的演讲中提到：一个学者应该有他话语里的错误会很快被揭露的意识，并且要对此感到满意，

As for what is true, he can count on ultimately seeing it accepted, if only he lives long enough.
因为只要他活得够长，他就能寄希望于看见那些正确的道理被人们接受。