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Finance & economics
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Why economics does not understand business
为什么经济学不能理解商业
It is the mid-1990s and the economics faculty at a leading business school is meeting.
那是上世纪90年代中期，一所顶尖商学院的经济学全体教员正在开会。
The assembled dons are in a prickly mood.
聚集在一起的教师们怀着一种愠怒情绪。
Many are upset that business-school fields, such as marketing and organisational behaviour, enjoy a higher standing despite their apparent lack of rigour.
让其中许多人很不高兴的是，商学院的领域，如市场营销和组织行为学，尽管显然缺乏严谨性，却享有更高的地位。
That economics ought to command more respect is keenly felt.
他们深以为经济学应该得到更多的尊重。
One professor can barely contain his scorn.
一位教授几乎无法抑制他的蔑视之意。
Anyone with a good PhD in economics, he declares, could comfortably teach in any of the school's other departments.
他宣称，任何拥有经济学博士学位的人都可以轻轻松松地在学院的其他任何系任教。
It is tempting to see this as a story about the arrogance of economists.
人们很容易认为这是关于傲慢的经济学家的故事。
And in part, it is.
在某种程度上，确实如此。
The discipline's imperialism--its tendency to claim the territory of fields adjacent to economics as its own--is a bugbear of social scientists.
这门学科的帝国主义 -- 将与经济学相邻的领域据为己有的倾向 -- 一直令社会科学家头疼。
Yet the professor had a point.
但这位教授说得有道理。
In the 1990s economics could plausibly claim to be moving towards a unified science of business.
在上世纪90年代，经济学似乎可以说正在向一门统一的商业科学迈进。
A realistic theory of the firm was in prospect.
关于公司的现实理论有望形成。
Alas, three decades on, it is no closer.
唉，三十年过去了，还差得远呢。
Economics has rich models of competition and markets.
经济学有丰富的竞争模型和市场模型。
But its powers still tend to falter once inside the factory gate or office building.
但一旦进入工厂大门或办公楼，它的力量还是会衰弱。
It is worth asking why.
其中原因值得一问。
Economics is--or at least is supposed to be--about the allocation of scarce resources.
经济学是 -- 或者至少应该是 -- 关乎稀缺资源的配置的。
In neoclassical theory, markets take centre stage.
在新古典主义理论中，市场占据中心舞台。
The factors of production (land, labour and capital) and the supply and demand of goods and services move in response to price signals from market exchange.
生产要素(土地、劳动力和资本)以及商品和服务的供求根据市场交换的价格信号而变化。
Resources go to the most profitable use. That is the theory.
资源被用于最有利可图的用途。理论就是这样。
It has a glaring omission, as Ronald Coase, an economist, pointed out in a paper in 1937.
正如经济学家罗纳德·科斯在1937年的一篇论文中所指出的，这一理论有一个明显的疏漏。
Much of the allocation of resources in economies occurs not in markets but within firms.
经济活动中的大部分资源配置不是在市场中进行的，而是在公司内部进行。
The prime movers are employees.
主要推动者是员工。
They are directed not by price signals but by administrative fiat.
他们不受价格信号指导，而受行政命令指导。
The theory that firms are profit-maximisers is another clash with reality.
"企业是利润最大化者"这一理论是与现实的另一个矛盾。
They operate in a fog of ignorance and error, noted Herbert Simon, a pioneer of artificial intelligence and decision sciences.
人工智能和决策科学的先驱赫伯特·西蒙指出，企业在无知和差错的迷雾中运作。
No business could process all the information needed to extract maximum profit.
没有企业能处理获取最大利润所需的所有信息。
Instead firms operate under conditions of "bounded rationality", making decisions that are satisfactory rather than optimal.
公司在"有限理性"的条件下运作，做出令人满意的而非最优的决策。
For years, economics did little to advance along the lines drawn by Coase and Simon.
多年来，在科斯和西蒙划出的路线上，经济学几乎没有太多进展。
As late as 1972, Coase complained that his paper on the nature of the firm was "much cited and little used".
直到1972年，科斯还抱怨说，他关于公司本质的论文"被引用的倒多，被使用的却很少"。
Yet almost as soon as Coase lamented its absence, a body of rigorous research on the firm began to emerge.
然而，几乎就在科斯哀叹没有相关研究之后，关于公司的大量严谨研究立刻开始出现。
It proceeded to flourish over the course of the following two decades.
在接下来的二十年里，这方面的研究继续蓬勃发展。
A key pillar of this research is the idea of the firm as the co-ordinator of team production, where each team member's contribution cannot be separated from the others.
这种研究的一个关键支柱是认为公司是团队生产的协调者，每个成员的贡献不能与其他成员的分开。
Team output requires a hierarchy to delegate tasks, monitor effort and to reward people accordingly.
团队产出需要一个等级制度来委派任务、监控工作并相应地奖励员工。
This in turn needs a different kind of arrangement.
这继而需要一种不同的安排。
In market transactions, goods are exchanged for money, the deal is done and there is little scope for dispute.
在市场交易中，商品用钱来交换，交易完成，过程中几乎没有争议的余地。
But because of bounded rationality, it is not possible in business to set down in advance all that is required of each party in every possible circumstance.
但由于有限理性，在商业活动中，不可能预先定下在每一种可能出现的情况中对各方的所有要求。
A firm's contracts with its employees are by necessity "incomplete".
一家公司与其员工的合同必然是"不完整的"。
They are sustained by trust and, ultimately, by the threat of breakdown, which is costly to all parties.
合同靠信任维持，最根本的是靠合同破裂的可能性维持，合同一旦破裂，各方都要付出代价。
