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Finance and economics
财经版块
Prophets of maximisation
最大化预言者
How Chicago school economists reshaped American justice.
芝加哥学派的经济学家如何重塑美国司法。
In recent years the antitrust division of America’s Department of Justice has gone on a crusade against corporate mergers, filing a record number of complaints in an attempt to stop the biggest businesses from getting even bigger.
近年来，美国司法部反垄断部门发起了一场反对企业合并的运动，提交了创纪录的大量控告，试图阻止企业巨头变得更为庞大。
With few exceptions, these efforts have been thwarted by the courts.
除了极少数的例外，这些努力都遭到了法院的阻挠。
That it is so hard to get a judge to intervene in business reflects the work of an institution known more for its free-market influence on economics than the law: the University of Chicago.
让法官干预商业活动是如此之艰难，这反映了一个机构的学说，这个机构以自由市场对经济而非对法律的影响而闻名：它就是芝加哥大学。
Fifty years ago this autumn Richard Posner, a federal judge and Chicago scholar, published his “Economic Analysis of Law”.
50年前的秋季，联邦法官兼芝加哥派学者理查德·波斯纳出版了他的《法律的经济分析》。
Now in its 9th edition, the book set off an avalanche of ideas from Chicago school economists, including Gary Becker, Ronald Coase and Milton Friedman, which passed into the folios of America’s judges and lawyers.
这本书现在已经出版到了第九版，它启发了芝加哥学派经济学家的众多理论，包括加里·贝克尔、罗纳德·科斯和米尔顿·弗里德曼，这些理论后来为美国法官和律师所研习。
The “law-and-economics” movement made the courts more reasoned and rigorous.
“法律经济学”运动使法院变得更加理性和严谨。
It also changed the verdicts judges handed out.
这一运动还改变了法官做出的裁决。
Research has found that those exposed to its ideas are more opposed to regulators and less likely to enforce antitrust laws, and tend to impose prison terms more often and for longer.
研究发现，经常接触这些理论的人更加反对监管机构，也不太可能执行反垄断法，而且往往会更频繁地判处更长时间的监禁。
Links between economics and the law have long been studied.
长期以来，人们一直在研究经济学和法律之间的联系。
In “Leviathan”, published in 1651, Thomas Hobbes wrote that secure property rights, which are needed for a system of economic exchange, are a legal fiction that emerged only with the modern state.
在1651年出版的《利维坦》一书中，托马斯·霍布斯写道，稳定的财产权是经济交换体系所必需的条件，这是一种法律上的构想，只在现代国家才会出现。
By the late 19th century, legal fields that overlapped with economics, such as matters of taxation, were being analysed by economists.
到19世纪末，与经济学重叠的法律领域，比如税收问题，由经济学家来分析。
With the arrival of the law-and-economics movement, every legal question was suddenly addressed in the context of the incentives of actors and the changes these produced.
随着法律经济学运动的到来，所有法律问题突然都在“行动者的激励和这些激励所产生的变化”的语境中被解决。
In “Crime and punishment: an economic approach” (1968), Becker argued that, rather than being a balancing-act between punishment and the opportunity for reform, sentences act mainly as a deterrent: the literal “price of crime”.
在《犯罪与惩罚：经济分析法》(1968)一书中，贝克尔认为，判刑并不是实施惩罚和洗心革面之间的平衡行为，而是主要起到威慑作用：实际上就是“犯罪的代价”。
Harsh sentences, he argued, reduce criminal activity in much the same way as high prices cut demand.
他认为，严刑重罚能减少犯罪活动，就像高昂的价格能减少需求。
With the caveat that a greater chance of arrest is a better deterrent than longer prison sentences, Becker’s theorising has since been borne out by decades of empirical evidence.
贝克尔告诫称，较高的逮捕几率比较长的刑期更具威慑力，他的理论被后来数十年的实证证据所证实。
In the movement’s early days, “the legal academy paid little attention to our work”, recalls Guido Calabresi, a former dean of Yale Law School and another of the field’s founding fathers.
耶鲁大学法学院前院长、法律经济学的另一位奠基人圭多·卡拉布雷西回忆道，在这场运动的早期，“法学界很少关注我们的工作”。
Two things changed this.
有两件事改变了这一点。
The first was Mr Posner’s bestselling textbook, in which he wrote that “it may be possible to deduce the basic formal characteristics of law itself from economic theory.”
首先是波斯纳的畅销教科书，他在书中写道：“或许可以从经济理论中推断出法律本身的基本形式特征。”
Mr Posner was a jurist, who wrote in a language familiar to other jurists.
波斯纳是一名法学家，他用其他法学家熟悉的语言写作。
Yet he was also steeped in the economic insights of the Chicago school.
然而，他也浸淫于芝加哥学派的经济学洞见之中。
His book successfully thrust the law-and-economics movement into the legal mainstream.
他的书成功地将法律经济学运动推向了法学界的主流。
