评论
打印
A publisher might buy a printing company in order to have more control over its assets, and ensure its presses are used to print its own books first.
出版商可能会为了对其资产有更多的控制权并确保印刷设备首先被用于印刷自家的图书而收购一家印刷公司。
Yet if the takeover means that the workers tending the presses see smaller rewards for their efforts, and their managers cannot keep tabs on them, they might shirk the extra sorts of work that keep the presses running as productively as possible.
然而，如果这一收购意味着维护印刷机的工人看到的是较小的对于他们努力的报答，同时他们的管理人员又不可能时时刻刻地监视他们，他们就可能减少保持印刷设备尽可能高效运转的额外工作。
So the theory has real-world relevance; Mr Hart used it to explain precisely why inmates may fare worse at privately run prisons than at public ones.
因此，这一理论具有现实世界相关性；哈特曾用它精准地解释了为什么囚犯在私立监狱可能比在公立监狱过得差。
Managers of both care about the bottom line, but the incentive to cut costs is sharper in private prisons, because the profits flow into the pockets of owners who benefit directly.
两类监狱的管理人员都关注盈亏底线，但是，在公立监狱，消减成本的激励更加锋利，因为盈利流入直接获益的所有者的口袋。
The work of Mr Holmstrom, a Finnish economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, centres on the behaviour of individuals rather than organisations.
麻省理工芬兰裔经济学家霍尔姆斯特罗姆的研究重点是个人而非组织的行为。
Many of the basic power dynamics in society boil down to the relationship between one person—a principal—who needs another—an agent—to do something for him.
在社会中，许多基本的权力动力学可以归纳为一个人——委托人——需要另一个人——代理人——为其做事之间的关系。
The principal can use contracts to shape the incentives facing the agent, the better to get him to direct his activities.
委托人可以利用契约形成面向代理人的激励，能够让他以之指导他的行为更好。
Yet getting the incentives just right is no easy feat.
然而，把激励设置的正合适不是那么容易的。
A firm owner setting pay for a senior manager wants to get his employee to deliver the best possible results.
为高级管理人员制定薪水的企业所有者想让他的雇员呈现最好的可能结果。
Linking a bonus to performance—to profits, for example—would seem to be the order of the day.
把奖金与业绩——如利润——挂钩似乎会成为当今的潮流。
Yet profits rise and fall for reasons which have nothing to do with managerial effort, such as the health of the economy.
然而，利润会因为经济体健康等与管理努力毫不相干的种种原因而上升和下降。
Bonus payments that mostly reward this sort of noise actually dull the incentives facing the manager.
大都奖励给这类干扰的奖金支付实际上是削弱了面向管理人员的激励。
Better to base contracts only on information (like profits relative to the industry average) which sheds light on the manager's true performance.
最好将契约只建立在彰显出管理人员真正业绩的信息 (如相对于行业平均水平的利润) 的基础之上。
Yet surprisingly often, firms opt not to structure pay in this way.
然而，令人吃惊的是，企业经常选择不用这种办法构成工资。
Mr Holmstrom's work describes why that might be so.
霍尔姆斯特罗姆的研究描述的正是可能如此的原因。
Most jobs are made up of many different tasks, for instance, some of which are easier to assess than others.
例如，大多数工作都是由许多不同的任务构成的，有些任务要比另外一些更容易评估。
Bonuses linked to the easily measured stuff, like profits, encourage agents to spend more time boosting those measures, at the expense of other, harder-to-measure things that are nonetheless important, like brand reputation or product quality.
与利润等容易衡量的东西相挂钩的奖金鼓励代理人，以品牌声誉或产品质量这些虽然重要但更难以衡量的东西为代价，花更多的时间去提高这些尺度。
In some cases, firms might therefore opt to pay fixed salaries, or to separate roles into those specialising in the easy-to-assess tasks, who can be offered high-powered incentive pay, and others paid fixed rates for woollier sorts of work.
因而，在某些情况下，企业可能选择支付固定工资，或是把角色拆分为专门从事容易评估任务的人——他们能够被提供高水平的激励工资以及因为较为模糊的工作种类而被付给固定比率的其他人。
Throughout his career, Mr Holmstrom has worked out how the ways contracts can and cannot be made to manipulate others determine the structure of jobs, firms and even industries.
纵观其学术生涯，霍尔姆斯特罗姆一直都在设法解决契约能不能以某种具体的方式被打造出来以便影响决定工作、企业乃至行业结构的其他人。
Like many of the most deserving laureates, Mr Hart and Mr Holmstrom opened whole new lines of inquiry to later economists (indeed, the winner of the prize in 2014, Jean Tirole, did important work in response to their contributions) .
如同许多最值得的得主一样，对于后来的经济学家而言，哈特和霍尔姆斯特罗姆开辟了质疑的全新线索 (实际上，2014年得主让·梯若尔在响应他们的贡献方面做出了重要的工作)。
The Nobel committee should be applauded for rewarding economists who place power dynamics front and centre.
诺奖评委会理应因为奖励将权力动力学置于前沿和中心的经济学家而得到掌声。
Economic life is messy, but it is also, occasionally, comprehensible.
经济生活是凌乱的，但偶尔也是可以理解的。
