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The global economic financial crisis has reignited public interest
全球金融危机让人们对早在亚当·斯密时代
in something that's actually one of the oldest questions in economics, dating back to at least before Adam Smith.
就被提出的一个古老的经济学问题重新产生了兴趣：
And that is, why is it that countries with seemingly similar economies and institutions can display radically different savings behavior?
“为什么经济规模和政治体制看起来相似的国家之间，国民的储蓄习惯差别如此之大？”
Now, many brilliant economists have spent their entire lives working on this question,
已经有很多经济学大师花毕生精力研究了这个问题，
and as a field we've made a tremendous amount of headway and we understand a lot about this.
取得了很大的进展，我们对这个问题也有了很深的认识。
What I'm here to talk with you about today is an intriguing new hypothesis
我今天要跟大家分享的是一个很有意思的假说，
and some surprisingly powerful new findings that I've been working on
我研究了人们说的语言的（语法）结构
about the link between the structure of the language you speak and how you find yourself with the propensity to save.
和他们的存钱习惯之间的关系，并得到了一些意外的新发现。
Let me tell you a little bit about savings rates, a little bit about language, and then I'll draw that connection.
我们先介绍国民储蓄比率，再介绍语言差别，然后我们把这两者联系起来。
Let's start by thinking about the member countries of the OECD, or the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.
我们从OECD国家开始考虑，OECD即“经济合作与发展组织”。
OECD countries, by and large, you should think about these as the richest, most industrialized countries in the world.
基本上OECD包含的都是世界上最富有的工业化国家。
And by joining the OECD, they were affirming a common commitment to democracy, open markets and free trade.
而且加入OECD组织的国家都需要符合民主政府、开放市场和自由贸易等要求。
Despite all of these similarities, we see huge differences in savings behavior.
虽然这些国家都是很相似的，但是他们的存储行为差别很大。
So all the way over on the left of this graph,
看这张图的左边，
what you see is many OECD countries saving over a quarter of their GDP every year,
你会看到多数OECD成员国年储蓄率超过GDP的1/4，
and some OECD countries saving over a third of their GDP per year.
而部分成员国的年储蓄率达到了GDP的1/3。
