经济学人下载:新冠疫情——检验资本主义的工具(1)

Political economy is a discipline in which rigorous empirical testing is difficult.
政治经济学是一门难以进行严格实证检验的学科。

Scholars are rarely presented with the kind of naturally occurring experiments which crop up in other fields of economic inquiry,
学者们很少能遇到像在其他经济研究领域那样突然出现的自然发生的实验，

such as when one state increases its minimum wage while its neighbours do not. Covid-19 is different.
比如当一个国家提高了最低工资，而邻国却没有的时候。新冠病毒则不同。

Though it is quite the cloud, for political economists the silver lining is that it provides an opportunity to look, in real time,
尽管乌云密布，但对政治经济学家而言，一线希望在于它提供了一个实时机会

at how different models of governance react to a simultaneous shock.
观察不同的管理模式是如何应对这个实时发生的冲击的。

Various taxonomies are used to categorise models of capitalism.
用于归类资本主义模式的分类标准有很多。

A prominent one was set out in 2001 in "Varieties of Capitalism", a book edited by Peter Hall, a political scientist, and David Soskice, an economist.
最突出的一种出现在2001年《资本主义的多样性》一书中，该书编辑为政治学家Peter Hall以及经济学家David Soskice。

It distinguished between liberal market economies (LMES) such as America, Britain and Canada,
其区分了自由市场经济（LMES），如美国、英国和加拿大，

and co-ordinated market economies (CMES) such as Germany, the Nordic countries, Austria and the Netherlands.
以及协调市场经济体（CMES），如德国、北欧国家、奥地利和荷兰。

LMES' capitalism is redblooded, relying on market mechanisms to allocate resources and determine wages,
LMES的资本主义是活泼有力的，依赖于市场机制分配资源和决定薪酬，

and on financial markets to allocate capital. CMES, though still capitalist, are fonder of social organisations such as trade unions, and of bank finance.
并依赖金融市场分配资本。而虽然仍是资本主义者，但CMES更喜欢社会组织，如工会，以及喜欢银行融资。

Western economies tend to sit on a continuum between these two models.
西方经济体往往处于这两种模式之间的连续统一体上。

In recent years scholars have also tried to account for the authoritarian, state-driven capitalism found some other countries.
近几年，学者们也尝试解释一些其他国家独裁主义的、国家驱动的资本主义。

Branko Milanovic of the City University of New York calls this model "political capitalism".
纽约市立大学的Branko Milanovic称这种模式为“政治资本主义”。

These frameworks are surprisingly good at parsing countries' responses to the pandemic. Consider innovation.
这些框架在分析各国对这一流行病的反应方面出奇地出色。考虑到创新性。

Scholars distinguish between incremental innovation, the continuous process of making marginal improvements to products and processes,
学者们将渐进性创新（对产品和流程进行边际改进的连续过程）

and radical innovation, which may involve the launch of entirely new goods and services.
以及根本性创新（这可能包括推出全新的商品和服务）进行了区分。

Whereas CMES, with their emphasis on specific skills and long-term thinking, should be better at incremental innovation,
而强调特殊技能以及长期思考的CMES应该更擅长渐进性创新，

they are at a disadvantage when it comes to radical innovation.
在根本性创新方面，他们处于劣势。

They are constrained by the structures they have erected to steer the economy, which are slow to adapt to wholesale change.
他们为了驾驭经济而建立的结构限制了他们，这些结构对大规模变革的适应很慢。