John Cochrane on Economic Puzzles and Habits of Mind (Ep. 117)
Hello, everyone.
大家好。
Welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
欢迎回到与泰勒对话。
Today, I’m here with John Cochrane.
今天，我和约翰·科克伦在一起。
I refer to John as a voice of sanity, but to the world as a whole, he’s known as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and he also blogs at Grumpy Economist.
我称约翰为理智的声音，但对于整个世界来说，他被称为胡佛研究所的高级研究员，并且他还在脾气暴躁的经济学家上发表博客。
John, good morning.
约翰，早上好。
Good morning.
早上好。
How are you, Tyler?
你好吗，泰勒？
These are the questions I want to ask you.
这些是我想问你的问题。
First, why aren’t real interest rates equalized across countries?
首先，为什么各国的实际利率没有均衡？
That’s always bothered me.
这一直困扰着我。
You started right in easy.
你一开始就很简单。
I don’t know.
我不知道。
COWEN: Brazil has very high real interest rates for decades, right?
COWEN：几十年来，巴西的实际利率非常高，对吗？
Arbitrage doesn’t seem to work.
套利似乎不起作用。
Well, that’s not an arbitrage.
嗯，这不是套利。
An arbitrage is the opportunity to make a sure profit, no risk.
套利是获得确定利润、无风险的机会。
You got to invest in Brazil, and you got to take the risks of investing in Brazil, which include, usually, currency risk.
你必须在巴西投资，你必须承担在巴西投资的风险，其中通常包括货币风险。
The real interest rate is the interest that you get after the expected appreciation or depreciation of the currency.
实际利率是货币预期升值或贬值后获得的利息。
Then there’s the legal risk that they might expropriate your stuff.
然后还有他们可能没收你的东西的法律风险。
It looks like there’s a profitable opportunity to invest in Brazil.
看来在巴西投资有一个有利可图的机会。
Put that way, now it starts to look like everything else in finance.
这么说吧，现在它开始看起来像金融领域的其他一切了。
There’s what looks like a profitable opportunity.
这看起来像是一个有利可图的机会。
There’s risk.
有风险。
Are people properly balancing the profitable opportunity and the risks?
人们是否正确平衡了盈利机会和风险？
Why is Tesla stock so high?
特斯拉股价为何如此之高？
Why are value stocks so low?
为什么价值股这么低？
There’re opportunities that you and I, as an economist, can’t quite suss out what the risks are, keeping other people from investing in.
作为一名经济学家，你和我无法完全弄清楚其中的风险是什么，从而阻止其他人投资。
But if you’d like to buy a Brazilian gold mine, I can arrange it for you, Tyler.
但如果你想购买巴西金矿，我可以为你安排，泰勒。
Well, but look, we know currencies are very close to a random walk, correct?
好吧，但是看，我们知道货币非常接近随机游走，对吗？
You’ve seen the countries that have higher real rates of return, higher discount rates.
您已经看到了实际回报率更高、折扣率更高的国家。
They should have higher expected returns on their market.
他们在市场上应该有更高的预期回报。
Brazil is small relative to the world as a whole.
相对于整个世界，巴西很小。
There’s a lot of capital that could invest more in Brazil without being systemically much riskier.
有很多资本可以在巴西进行更多投资，而不会造成系统性风险太大。
You would think that simply pursuing higher expected returns — that ought to go away, and real interest rates across the world should equalize, but they don’t seem to.
你可能会认为，单纯追求更高的预期回报——这种做法应该消失，世界各地的实际利率应该趋于平衡，但事实似乎并非如此。
Well, all sorts of apparent opportunities should equalize.
好吧，各种明显的机会应该是平等的。
I urge you to start a hedge fund.
我敦促你创办一家对冲基金。
Let’s talk about what’s documented here.
我们来谈谈这里记录的内容。
There’s the puzzle of uncovered interest parity — you do seem to be able to make more money investing in countries that have high interest rates now.
存在未揭露的利率平价之谜——现在投资于高利率的国家似乎确实能够赚更多的钱。
As you’ve mentioned, a high interest rate should go along with an expected depreciation of the currency, and that pattern doesn’t seem to be very strong.
正如你所提到的，高利率应该伴随着预期的货币贬值，但这种模式似乎并不是很强。
On the other hand, when it goes wrong, it goes wrong big time and all at the same time.
另一方面，当出现问题时，它会同时出现大问题。
Our friends who have started hedge funds that do this sort of stuff make money for a little while, and then they lose it all.
我们的朋友们创办了从事此类活动的对冲基金，他们赚了一段时间，然后就全都赔光了。
There hasn’t been a gold mine in people trying to exploit this thing.
试图利用这个东西的人并没有发现金矿。
It’s one more hedge fund strategy that you’re welcome to invest in, like all the other hedge fund strategies.
与所有其他对冲基金策略一样，这是另一种欢迎您投资的对冲基金策略。
There’s a larger question — why is China exporting capital and not importing capital cross-border flows?
还有一个更大的问题——为什么中国跨境流动时输出资本而不是输入资本？
It’s one of those things that sort of bedevils us free marketers.
这是困扰我们自由营销人员的事情之一。
We look at something that ought to happen more of.
我们着眼于一些应该发生更多的事情。
For years people said, “Why isn’t there more cross-border investment?” Then there started being huge cross-border investment that has to go on container ships.
多年来，人们一直在问：“为什么没有更多的跨境投资？”然后，巨额跨境投资开始转向集装箱船。
Money doesn’t just flow.
金钱不只是流动。
Investment means you put stuff on container ships and send it around the world.
投资意味着你把东西放在集装箱船上然后运往世界各地。
Now, all of a sudden, “No, there’re too many trade flows and too much hot money, and we can’t have all this cross-border investment.” There is more and more cross-border investment happening, now to the extent that many of our colleagues call it a puzzle and a savings glut, sudden stops, and so forth.
现在，突然间，“不，贸易流量太多，热钱太多，我们不能拥有所有这些跨境投资。”跨境投资越来越多，以至于我们的许多同事称之为困惑、储蓄过剩、突然停止等等。
I don’t think judging the right price or the right market is what free-market libertarians ought to be doing.
我不认为判断正确的价格或正确的市场是自由市场自由主义者应该做的事情。
That’s why I’m a little uncomfortable with your question.
这就是为什么我对你的问题有点不舒服。
Say you take the major forecasters, who are not at all stupid, right?
假设你以主要的预测者为例，他们一点也不傻，对吧？
It seems their real interest rate forecasts have been very wrong now, actually, literally for decades.
现在看来，他们的实际利率预测实际上几十年来一直非常错误。
What theoretical mistake are they making, in your opinion?
您认为他们犯了什么理论上的错误？
Let’s talk about this.
我们来谈谈这个吧。
There’re nominal interest rate forecasts, where people, for example, for the last entire 10 years, everyone said, “Well, we’re going to exit quickly.” And we didn’t.
有名义利率预测，例如，在过去的整整 10 年里，每个人都说，“好吧，我们将很快退出。”但我们没有。
I don’t think there’s forecasts at the real rate, but there’s this long trend since 1980 of real rates going down.
我认为没有对实际利率的预测，但自 1980 年以来实际利率一直呈下降趋势。
Again, we’re playing the game that Hayek told us not to play, of sitting around a coffee table and say what forces are moving prices around.
我们再一次玩了哈耶克告诉我们不要玩的游戏，坐在咖啡桌旁谈论是什么力量在推动价格波动。
There’s all sorts of speculation about it.
对此有各种各样的猜测。
We can have fun.
我们可以玩得开心。
I can give you the five theories.
我可以给你五个理论。
I don’t believe in any of them.
我不相信他们中的任何一个。
There are fundamentals here.
这里有一些基础知识。
We have moved to a much lower growth economy.
我们已经转向了增长速度低得多的经济。
Let me back up.
让我备份一下。
Everyone jumps to the savings gluts in the Federal Reserve and the this and the that.
每个人都跳到美联储的储蓄过剩以及这样那样的情况。
There’re fundamentals that say low interest rates make sense.
基本面表明低利率是有道理的。
The first one is, we are moving to a lower-growth economy, to stagnation.
第一个是，我们的经济正在走向低增长、停滞。
You and I are technical optimists.
你和我都是技术乐观主义者。
We think this is temporary and will reverse.
我们认为这是暂时的并且将会逆转。
But the fact is, productivity growth has been slowing down.
但事实是，生产率增长一直在放缓。
We’re now a low-growth economy.
我们现在是一个低增长经济体。
Well, a low-growth economy has lower real interest rates.
嗯，低增长经济体的实际利率较低。
That’s just the first principle of macroeconomics — a low-growth economy has less opportunities for investment.
这就是宏观经济学的第一条原则——低增长的经济体投资机会较少。
Therefore, lower interest rates, lower returns on capital.
因此，利率较低，资本回报率较低。
It’s weird that that’s the first principle of macro, and all these smart people get it wrong, right?
奇怪的是，这是宏观的第一原理，而所有这些聪明人都搞错了，对吧？
What’s their defect?
他们的缺陷是什么？
Well, I have a hard time figuring out what I think is right, let alone why other people get things wrong.
好吧，我很难弄清楚我认为什么是对的，更不用说为什么其他人会做错事了。
And looking into people’s heads is another bad intellectual habit.
观察人们的头脑是另一个坏的智力习惯。
There’re basic principles that say low interest makes sense.
有一些基本原则表明低利率是有道理的。
Low growth, and for the moment, low inflation.
低增长，目前也是低通胀。
I’m not quite sure why we have low inflation, but low and anchored inflation means there’s much less inflation risk.
我不太清楚为什么我们的通胀率很低，但低且稳定的通胀意味着通胀风险要小得多。
Furthermore, especially for the dollar, bonds are very good.
此外，特别是对于美元来说，债券非常好。
They’re very safe investments because every time there’s a recession, bonds go up.
它们是非常安全的投资，因为每次经济衰退时，债券都会上涨。
So there’s every reason to hold bonds, in particular, for those lower than stocks.
因此，我们有充分的理由持有债券，尤其是那些低于股票的债券。
On top of that, you can put on your frictions and your demographics and so forth.
最重要的是，你可以添加你的摩擦和你的人口统计数据等等。
I think it sort of makes sense, but also, I don’t like armchair theorizing about things like this.
我认为这是有道理的，但同时，我也不喜欢对这样的事情进行纸上谈兵的理论。
Well, we’re in armchairs.
好吧，我们坐在扶手椅上。
Yes, well, that’s our job.
是的，这就是我们的工作。
Why is there so much active funds management?
为什么有如此多的主动基金管理？
We all know, for risk rebalancing, it makes sense.
众所周知，对于风险再平衡来说，这是有道理的。
For liquidity, it makes sense, but it seems there’s much more trading than can be accounted for, for those motives.
就流动性而言，这是有道理的，但出于这些动机，交易量似乎超出了可解释的范围。
Doesn’t this mean markets are, in some sense, highly inefficient, if everyone’s paying all those fees?
如果每个人都支付所有这些费用，这是否意味着市场在某种意义上是非常低效的？
You ask two questions here.
你在这里问两个问题。
One is active management, and the other is trading.
一是主动管理，二是交易。
I’d like to distinguish them.
我想区分它们。
It’s a puzzle in the Chicago free market sense.
这是芝加哥自由市场意义上的一个谜题。
Let me ask your question even more pointedly.
让我更尖锐地问你的问题。
If you believe in efficient markets, and you believe in competition, and things work out right, we’ve scientifically proven since the 1960s, that high-fee active managers don’t earn any more than a proverbial monkey throwing darts in a well-managed slow index.
如果你相信有效市场，相信竞争，而且事情进展顺利，我们自 20 世纪 60 年代以来就已经科学地证明，高费用主动型基金经理的收入并不比众所周知的猴子在管理良好的缓慢指数中扔飞镖的收入高。
So why do people keep paying for high-fee active management?
那么，为什么人们继续为高额主动管理付费呢？
Chicago free market — we’re not supposed to say, “Oh, people are dumb for 40 years — 50 years now,” but there’s a lot of it.
芝加哥自由市场 — 我们不应该说，“哦，人们愚蠢了 40 年 — 现在 50 年了”，但这样的事情有很多。
It’s one of those things.
这是其中之一。
Active management is slowly falling away.
主动管理正在慢慢消失。
The move towards passive index investment is getting stronger and stronger.
被动指数投资的趋势越来越强烈。
There’s a strong new literature, which I’ll point to.
有一些强大的新文献，我会指出。
My colleague here, Jonathan Berk, has written some good articles on it.
我的同事乔纳森·伯克（Jonathan Berk）就此写了一些很好的文章。
This is the puzzle of efficient markets.
这就是有效市场的难题。
If everybody indexed, markets couldn’t be efficient because no one’s out there getting the information that makes markets efficient.
如果每个人都建立索引，市场就不可能高效，因为没有人能够获得使市场高效的信息。
Markets have to be a little inefficient, and somebody has to do the trading.
市场必须有点低效，并且必须有人进行交易。
Your second question is about trading.
你的第二个问题是关于交易的。
Why is there this immense volume of trading?
为什么会有如此巨大的交易量？
When was the last time you bought or sold a stock?
您最后一次买入或卖出股票是什么时候？
You don’t do it every 20 milliseconds, do you?
你不会每 20 毫秒就执行一次，是吗？
I’ll highlight this.
我会强调这一点。
If I get my list of the 10 great unsolved puzzles that I hope our grandchildren will have figured out, why does getting the information into asset prices require that the stock be turned over a hundred times?
如果我列出了我希望我们的孙子能够解决的十大未解难题，为什么要将这些信息转化为资产价格需要股票翻转一百倍呢？
That’s clearly what’s going on.
这显然是发生了什么事。
There’s this vast amount of trading, which is based on information or opinion and so forth.
存在大量基于信息或意见等的交易。
I hate to discount it at all just as human folly, but that’s clearly what’s going on, but we don’t have a good model.
我讨厌将其视为人类的愚蠢行为，但这显然是正在发生的事情，但我们没有一个好的模型。
By the way, the only stock I ever sold was Brazil Fund.
顺便说一句，我卖过的唯一一只股票是巴西基金。
You sold it, and you’re telling me what a great opportunity Brazil is.
你卖掉了它，你告诉我巴西是一个多么好的机会。
On financial models
关于财务模型
There are habit formation theories of equity returns, right?
有股票回报的习惯形成理论，对吗？
As you well know.
正如你所知。
The notion that the return on equity is so much higher than the return on bonds because if you suffered losses on equity, it would disrupt your habits.
股本回报率远高于债券回报率的观点是，如果你遭受股本损失，就会扰乱你的习惯。
In a way, there’s a form of risk aversion that doesn’t exactly translate into the inverse of the discount rate.
在某种程度上，有一种形式的风险规避并不能完全转化为贴现率的倒数。
You know all that.
这些你都知道。
Now, having observed almost a year of pandemic behavior, do you now find habit formation theories more or less convincing?
现在，在观察了近一年的流行病行为后，您现在发现习惯形成理论或多或少令人信服吗？
Let me clarify.
让我澄清一下。
The essence of the habit — and this is a paper that John Campbell and I wrote in the 1990s — what we were trying to get at was not so much the level of the equity premium — why do stocks seem to pay reliably more than bonds, so much for so long?
这种习惯的本质 — 这是约翰·坎贝尔和我在 20 世纪 90 年代写的一篇论文 —“我们想要了解的并不是股票溢价水平 — 为什么股票似乎比债券支付得更可靠，而且持续时间如此长？
It doesn’t do a great job of that.
它在这方面做得并不好。
What it does a great job of is capturing what the essence of recessions is, and that’s a time when people get scared.
它所做的出色工作是捕捉衰退的本质，而那是人们感到恐惧的时期。
It’s a variation in risk aversion.
这是风险规避的一种变化。
When you think about what happens in a recession, what happened last March, what happened in 2008, what happens in every recession — it’s not so much that people want to consume less today and consume more of tomorrow’s savings.
当你思考经济衰退时会发生什么，去年 3 月发生的情况，2008 年发生的情况，每次经济衰退时发生的情况 ——人们并不是想减少今天的消费，而更多地消耗明天的储蓄。
It’s people get scared.
这是人们感到害怕。
They don’t want to hold risky assets.
他们不想持有风险资产。
They want to hold safe assets.
他们希望持有安全资产。
They act as if their risk aversion has gotten higher, and that’s what habits capture.
他们的表现就好像他们的风险厌恶程度变得更高了，这就是习惯所捕捉到的。
As consumption goes down relative to what you’re used to, people get more risk-averse, unwilling to take risks on stocks going forward.
随着消费相对于你习惯的水平下降，人们会变得更加厌恶风险，不愿意在未来的股票上承担风险。
So the stock market goes down much more than the economy goes down because recessions are mild, and that’s really puzzling.
因此，股市的下跌幅度远大于经济的下跌幅度，因为经济衰退很温和，这确实令人费解。
People keep saying, “Oh, this is the worst economy.” No, the economy — we’re back down to the level of 2017.
人们总是说：“哦，这是最糟糕的经济。”不，经济 ——我们又回到了 2017 年的水平。
Why do these temporary fluctuations make asset prices go so crazy?
为什么这些暂时的波动会让资产价格变得如此疯狂？
I think there’s something deep in that, and when stocks went down in March, I think people were scared as heck.
我认为其中有深层次的原因，当三月份股市下跌时，我认为人们感到非常害怕。
Whether the mechanism is habits or whether the mechanism is something involving leverage and risk-bearing capacity in financial markets is less important.
机制是习惯，还是涉及金融市场杠杆和风险承受能力的机制，都不太重要。
That was the deep point of the paper, which, of course, I’m going to keep saying I think is right.
这就是这篇论文的核心观点，当然，我会一直说我认为这是正确的。
I’m prejudiced in favor of it.
我对它抱有偏见。
People do, but I think it’s a deep feature.
人们确实如此，但我认为这是一个深刻的特征。
I think there’s something deep to it that when you are forced .
我认为当你被迫时，这里面有一些深刻的东西。
.
。
.
。
Even a middle-income person in America is vastly better off than the average person in India.
即使是美国的中等收入者也比印度的普通人富裕得多。
Yet, if you take somebody who’s earning $200,000 a year and make them earn $50,000 a year, this feels like a disaster to them.
然而，如果你让一个年收入 20 万美元的人年收入 5 万美元，这对他们来说就像一场灾难。
As opposed to, you take an average person in a village in India, and they get to earn $50,000 a year — they feel wonderful.
相反，在印度的一个村庄里，一个普通人每年可以赚 5 万美元——他们感觉棒极了。
The fact that people’s feelings about their consumption level and their actions, which is what counts in economics — their wanting to avoid a disaster depends on their experience of their recent past.
事实上，人们对自己的消费水平和行为的感受（这在经济学中很重要）——他们想要避免灾难的意愿取决于他们最近的经历。
I still like that idea.
我仍然喜欢这个主意。
Here’s a question from a reader.
这是一位读者的提问。
To paraphrase, “Finance was really exciting in the ’70s and ’80s.
换言之，“金融在 70 年代和 80 年代确实令人兴奋。
There was CAPM, Black–Scholes, prospect theory, et cetera, but what big exciting things have happened since?
出现了 CAPM、布莱克-斯科尔斯、前景理论等等，但此后发生了哪些令人兴奋的大事呢？
Where should we be looking for the next great innovation in finance?”
我们应该在哪里寻找金融领域的下一个伟大创新？”
I love this.
我喜欢这个。
You and I are now old enough to remember that every age thinks of the previous age as the great golden era.
你我现在已经足够大了，可以记住，每个时代都把上一个时代视为伟大的黄金时代。
I have a story.
我有一个故事。
Bob Lucas told the story that in the late ’60s and ’70s, when he and his buddies were developing rational expectations and getting all the stuff that got the Nobel prizes at Chicago, they felt awful because all the hot attention was going to MIT and Harvard and what people were doing there.
鲍勃·卢卡斯讲述了这样的故事：在 60 年代末和 70 年代，当他和他的伙伴们形成理性预期并在芝加哥获得所有获得诺贝尔奖的东西时，他们感觉很糟糕，因为所有的热门注意力都集中在麻省理工学院和哈佛大学以及人们在那里所做的事情上。
They felt like they were out in the wilderness, and they were, of course, looking back at — this was in the ’80s — they were looking back.
他们感觉自己身处荒野，当然，他们在回头看——“那是在 80 年代”——他们在回头看。
“That is a great golden age.” And now the ’80s, “Oh, it’s so boring here now.” Of course, now we look back at the ’80s as a great golden age.
“那是一个伟大的黄金时代。”而现在到了 80 年代，“哦，现在这里太无聊了。”当然，现在我们回顾八十年代是一个伟大的黄金时代。
There’s always this golden age of the past.
过去的黄金时代总是存在的。
What’s going on now in finance, I find fascinating.
我觉得金融界现在发生的事情很有趣。
I’m the kid of a historian, so I have always a broad aspect.
我是历史学家的孩子，所以我总是有广泛的方面。
I think of what our children will understand that we don’t understand yet and all the puzzles out there to be learned about them.
我想到我们的孩子将会理解我们还不理解的东西，以及所有需要了解的关于他们的谜题。
It fills me both with excitement and dread that I don’t have enough hours in the day to work on them.
这让我既兴奋又害怕，因为我一天中没有足够的时间来处理它们。
I mentioned one.
我提到过一个。
Why is there so much trading?
为什么会有如此多的交易？
Here’s a fundamental question we don’t know about asset markets.
这是我们不知道的关于资产市场的一个基本问题。
What happened in the last 10 years has been, I think, really deep.
我认为过去十年发生的事情影响非常深刻。
The field of finance turned from what I was doing — macro-finance versus the behavioralists who want to put psychological imperfections at the heart of everything.
金融领域从我正在做的事情转向宏观金融，而行为主义者则希望将心理缺陷置于一切事物的核心。
That faded, and an immense amount of effort went into the plumbing of finance.
这种情况逐渐消失，人们在金融管道方面投入了大量精力。
They call it institutional finance.
他们称之为机构金融。
The plumbing failed in 2008, so we learned a tremendous amount about the plumbing and about liquidity and about all the ways in which asset markets don’t look like the simple models, as you mentioned.
正如您提到的，管道在 2008 年失败了，因此我们对管道和流动性以及资产市场看起来不像简单模型的所有方面了解了大量。
What’s wrong with interest rates in Brazil?
巴西的利率出了什么问题？
Well, rather than look to habits of everybody or to psychological imperfections of everybody, what people are looking to now is, who’s active in currency markets, and how our banks are active, and how do their balance sheets look?
那么，人们现在关注的不是每个人的习惯或每个人的心理缺陷，而是谁在货币市场上活跃，我们的银行如何活跃，以及他们的资产负债表如何？
And the facts are just astounding.
事实令人震惊。
It does look like when there’s a lot of demand, prices go up.
看起来确实当需求很大时，价格就会上涨。
That shouldn’t be in financial markets.
这不应该发生在金融市场上。
People putting in a bunch of orders shouldn’t drive the prices up.
人们下大量订单不应该推高价格。
There’re these facts about trading and volume and the prices and flows.
有这些关于交易、交易量、价格和流量的事实。
The institutional finance — that’s the exciting thing that just happened, and now we have a great new data point in front of us.
机构金融 ——这是刚刚发生的令人兴奋的事情，现在我们面前有一个很棒的新数据点。
Any scientific field feels chaotic in the moment, but I still think it’s an exciting place to be.
目前任何科学领域都会让人感到混乱，但我仍然认为这是一个令人兴奋的地方。
On the fiscal theory of price level and inflation
论物价水平和通货膨胀的财政理论
This is the hardcore podcast, so we’re going to plunge right into the fiscal theory of price level and inflation.
这是核心播客，所以我们将直接深入探讨价格水平和通货膨胀的财政理论。
In your forthcoming manuscript, you summarized it as follows in one sentence: “The fiscal theory says that the price level adjusts so that the real value of a nominal debt is equal to the present value of primary surpluses.” Is that still true?
在您即将发表的手稿中，您用一句话总结如下：“财政理论认为，价格水平会进行调整，以使名义债务的实际价值等于基本盈余的现值。”这仍然是真的吗？
If on average, g is greater than r, namely, the growth rate of the economy is higher than real interest rates, the government has to pay on its debt?
如果平均而言，g大于r，即经济增长率高于实际利率，政府必须偿还债务吗？
Yes.
是的。
COWEN: Easy questions.
考恩：简单的问题。
I wish I could say the manuscript’s forthcoming.
我希望我能说手稿即将出版。
It’s turning into the key to all mythologies, but there is a draft.
它正在变成所有神话的钥匙，但有一个草案。
This is a big book project I’m working on.
这是我正在做的一个大图书项目。
I put the drafts up on my website as it goes along.
我把草稿放在我的网站上，随着它的进展。
I just wrote a “g greater than r” section last week.
我上周刚刚写了“g 大于 r”部分。
I knew this was coming.
我知道这一切即将到来。
Let me just back up.
让我备份一下。
The fiscal theory — for those of you who haven’t heard of it — this is an attempt at the basic plumbing of where inflation comes from.
财政理论 ——“对于那些还没有听说过它的人来说”—— 这是对通货膨胀来源的基本探索的尝试。
It’s not about the Fed printing up too much money.
这与美联储印太多钱无关。
It’s not about the magic of controlling interest rates.
这与控制利率的魔力无关。
But fundamentally, money gains its value because the government can soak it up by charging taxes at the end of the day.
但从根本上来说，金钱之所以能增值，是因为政府最终可以通过征税来吸收金钱。
That seems perfectly obvious, but it actually changes a lot about how all of the monetary theory we do works.
这似乎是显而易见的，但它实际上极大地改变了我们所做的所有货币理论的运作方式。
Among other things — I’m just backing up here for a second for our listeners — it says that the distinction between money and government bonds isn’t that important.
除其他事项外，“我只是为我们的听众支持一下”，它表明货币和政府债券之间的区别并不那么重要。
What matters is overall government debt and the government’s ability to pay that debt back.
重要的是政府总体债务以及政府偿还债务的能力。
And inflation comes when people lose faith in the government’s ability to pay back its debt.
当人们对政府偿还债务的能力失去信心时，通货膨胀就会出现。
They try to get rid of the debt because they know it’s not going to get paid back.
他们试图摆脱债务，因为他们知道债务不会得到偿还。
What do you do with it?
你用它做什么？
You buy stuff, and that drives up the price of goods and services.
你买东西，这就推高了商品和服务的价格。
That’s your quick background.
这就是你的快速背景。
What is the fiscal theory at the price level?
价格水平的财政理论是什么？
Now, r less than g stuff — it’s a broader issue than fiscal theory.
现在，r 小于 g 的东西 ——这是一个比财政理论更广泛的问题。
It’s the question of debt sustainability, and it’s a big deal right now.
这是债务可持续性的问题，现在是一件大事。
Does our government have to pay back debt or can it borrow?
我们的政府必须偿还债务还是可以借款？
Here’s the strategy: borrow money and never pay it back.
策略是这样的：借钱，永远不还。
In other words, just roll over the debt.
换句话说，只需展期债务即可。
Let it grow at the interest rate.
让它按利率增长。
For you and me, that doesn’t work because the repo man comes calling.
对于你和我来说，这不起作用，因为回购人打电话来了。
But for the government, if the economy grows faster than this rate of interest, then the ratio of debt to GDP will come back all on its own without the government having to do a lot to pay back that debt.
但对于政府来说，如果经济增长速度超过这个利率，那么债务与GDP的比率就会自行恢复，而无需政府采取很多措施来偿还债务。
So this is the shining promise.
这就是闪亮的应许。
If that’s true, and if it scales — this is the crucial thing — if you can borrow more, and the interest rates don’t go up, then government debt is a money machine.
如果这是真的，并且如果规模扩大了——这是至关重要的事情——如果你可以借更多钱，而利率不上升，那么政府债务就是一台赚钱机器。
Nobody needs to work anymore.
没有人需要再工作了。
No one needs to pay taxes anymore.
没有人需要再纳税了。
You can tell that’s not the case.
你可以看出事实并非如此。
The question’s why is that not the case?
问题是为什么事实并非如此？
When you look at the strategy, that’s not about .
当你查看策略时，你会发现这并不是重点。
.
。
.
。
I’m going to route that back to answering your question.
我将把这个问题转回回答你的问题。
Today’s fiscal question has really nothing to do with the r greater or less than g, even though it’s been a technical issue that makes economists just love writing papers about it because you get to do all sorts of limits and transfer salary conditions and interesting models about it.
今天的财政问题实际上与 r 大于或小于 g 无关，尽管这是一个技术问题，让经济学家们喜欢写有关它的论文，因为你可以做各种限制和转移工资条件和有趣的模型。
The reason is, what’s in prospect for the US is not borrowing once and then running no surplus or deficit for 40 years while we slowly grow out of the debt.
原因是，美国的前景不是借了一次债，然后在 40 年内没有盈余或赤字，同时慢慢摆脱债务。
What’s in prospect for the US is borrowing forever and ever.
美国的前景是永远借贷。
If the interest rate is 1 percent less than the growth rate, that gives you 1 percent of GDP for free, but the US is borrowing 5 percent of GDP forever.
如果利率比增长率低 1%，那么你就可以免费获得 GDP 的 1%，但美国却永远借入 GDP 的 5%。
That doesn’t compute even if r is less than g.
即使 r 小于 g，也无法计算。
If r is less than g — finally in answer to your question — big fiscal borrowing must be repaid by taxes.
如果 r 小于 g —— 最终回答你的问题 —— 巨额财政借款必须通过税收偿还。
Anything over 1 percent of GDP has to be repaid by taxes.
任何超过 GDP 1% 的部分都必须通过税收偿还。
If it isn’t going to be repaid by taxes, people are still going to try to get rid of that government debt and they’ll cause inflation.
如果不能通过税收偿还，人们仍然会试图摆脱政府债务，这将导致通货膨胀。
Now, during the pandemic, government debt is way up.
现在，在大流行期间，政府债务大幅上升。
Production is not up.
产量上不去。
What’s the prediction of the fiscal theory about price inflation?
财政理论对价格通胀的预测是什么？
Economists should never make predictions.
经济学家永远不应该做出预测。
But theories make predictions.
但理论可以做出预测。
Theories make conditional predictions.
理论做出有条件的预测。
Theories make if x happens and you hold everything else constant, then y ought to happen.
理论上，如果 x 发生并且其他一切保持不变，那么 y 就应该发生。
Economics is awfully bad at making unconditional predictions.
经济学非常不擅长做出无条件的预测。
“Here’s what’s going to happen.” Period.
“这就是将要发生的事情。”时期。
I think it’s a mistake to get into that game, but let me tell you what fiscal theory says.
我认为参与这个游戏是错误的，但让我告诉你财政理论是怎么说的。
I’ve been worried about inflation for 10 years, and critics say, “Look, it still hasn’t happened.
十年来我一直担心通货膨胀，批评者说：“看，这还没有发生。
So, dot, dot, dot, what a dummy you were.” Fiscal theory is not particularly special here.
所以，点，点，点，你真是个傻瓜。”财政理论在这里并不是特别特别。
It just opens the possibility that if you have too much debt, and you can’t pay it back, and bond markets get tired of you, that there will be sharp inflation to get rid of that debt rather than a default.
它只是开启了一种可能性：如果你负债过多，而你无法偿还，而债券市场对你感到厌倦，那么将会出现急剧的通货膨胀来摆脱债务，而不是违约。
That’s all the fiscal theory offers, which is, in some sense, pretty obvious.
这就是财政理论所提供的全部内容，从某种意义上说，这是相当明显的。
Well, it could happen.
嗯，这可能会发生。
Having built up a lot of debt, are we in danger of some sort of run — sovereign financial crisis?
积累了大量债务后，我们是否面临某种挤兑——主权金融危机的危险？
I think the answer is yes.
我认为答案是肯定的。
Ken Rogoff is out there.
肯·罗格夫就在那里。
He’s even more of a hawk than I am on these issues most of the time.
大多数时候，他在这些问题上比我更加鹰派。
Now, it’s a danger.
现在，这是一个危险。
Greek debt was great — 2005, 2006 — low interest rates.
希腊债务巨额——2005 年、2006 年——利率低。
Why hasn’t Greek debt exploded?
希腊债务为何没有爆发？
I don’t know.
我不知道。
Well, until all of a sudden, it didn’t.
好吧，直到突然之间，它没有。
The mechanism’s like a run.
这个机制就像跑步一样。
It’s like an earthquake.
就像地震一样。
We’re in danger of a roll-over crisis.
我们正面临着翻车危机的危险。
Bond markets look at $25 trillion of US debt and then in the next crisis, we want to borrow another $10 trillion.
债券市场着眼于 25 万亿美元的美国债务，然后在下一次危机中，我们希望再借入 10 万亿美元。
They say, “Sorry, guys, we’re done.” And now, everything that looked sustainable is all of a sudden not sustainable, and the r’s that were less than g are suddenly a lot bigger than g.
他们说：“对不起，伙计们，我们已经完成了。”而现在，所有看起来可持续的东西突然之间就变得不可持续了，小于 g 的 r 突然比 g 大很多。
You’re sitting on a powder keg, and a powder keg, a run, a crisis — if you could predict it happening, it would already have happened.
你坐在一个火药桶上，一个火药桶，一场逃跑，一场危机——如果你能预测它发生，它就已经发生了。
It’s one of those unstable situations.
这是不稳定的情况之一。
Fiscal theory —
财政理论 —
But interest rate futures are inefficient in this explanation, right?
但利率期货的这种解释是低效的，对吗？
Not inefficient, no, because —
不是效率低下，不是，因为 ——
Go long on volatility of interest rates.
做多利率波动性。
It’s inherently unpredictable.
它本质上是不可预测的。
Efficient or inefficient, now we’re down to arguing about information versus risk premiums, which I don’t want to argue about.
高效还是低效，现在我们开始争论信息与风险溢价，我不想争论这一点。
Even in an efficient market, there’s such a thing as a bank run.
即使在有效市场中，也存在银行挤兑的情况。
Everything looks fine until all of a sudden, the bank run, the black swan.
一切看起来都很好，直到突然出现银行挤兑、黑天鹅事件。
That’s the mechanism of the inflation.
这就是通货膨胀的机制。
It can look fine.
它看起来不错。
Interest rates never forecast inflation.
利率永远不会预测通货膨胀。
We can get religious about efficient markets or not.
我们可以信仰有效市场，也可以不信仰有效市场。
In the 1970s, interest rates were not high ahead of inflation.
在 20 世纪 70 年代，利率并不高于通货膨胀。
In the 1980s, interest rates were not low ahead of disinflation.
20世纪80年代，通货紧缩之前的利率并不低。
Interest rates are kind of a random walk, just like exchange rates.
利率是一种随机游走，就像汇率一样。
This is a deep fact of empirical finance.
这是实证金融学的一个深刻事实。
Asset prices don’t seem to move on information about fundamentals — if you want to call them that — like cash flows; they move on discount rate news.
资产价格似乎并不会随着基本面信息的变化而变化——如果你想称它们为现金流量的话；他们根据折扣率消息采取行动。
Another way of saying there’s money to be made by buying when prices are low and selling when prices are high if you can wait a long time.
另一种说法是，如果你能等待很长时间，那么在价格低的时候买入，在价格高的时候卖出就可以赚钱。
We’re sitting on a powder keg.
我们正坐在火药桶上。
We’re sitting on the possibility of a run, a crisis, which would be a sharp unforecast inflation, which the Fed gets to .
我们面临着挤兑、危机的可能性，这将是美联储所面临的不可预见的急剧通胀。
.
。
.
。
So yes, it’s about risk.
所以是的，这与风险有关。
It’s not about the forecast.
这与预测无关。
That’s a good way of putting it.
这是一个很好的表达方式。
On the value of crypto
关于加密货币的价值
Originally, I thought the value of crypto assets would fall to zero due to an arbitrage condition.
最初，我认为加密资产的价值会因套利条件而跌至零。
I now think I’m wrong.
我现在认为我错了。
What’s your theory of the value of crypto?
您对加密货币价值的理论是什么？
I think you’re still right.
我认为你还是对的。
So that market is also inefficient.
所以这个市场也是低效的。
No, it’s not inefficient.
不，这并不是低效。
We need a way to short Bitcoin in your view.
在您看来，我们需要一种做空比特币的方法。
That’s probably hard to do right now, but if we had one —
现在这可能很难做到，但如果我们有一个 ——
Well, you short bitcoin .
好吧，你做空比特币。
.
。
.
。
Here’s why I think Bitcoin eventually will die — because it is a pure fiat-unbacked money.
这就是为什么我认为比特币最终会消亡——因为它是一种纯粹的、没有法定货币支持的货币。
It doesn’t have a government that can raise taxes to soak up the extra money if needed.
它没有一个可以在需要时提高税收来吸收额外资金的政府。
It’s not a promise of anything real.
这不是任何真实的承诺。
It’s just a thing that’s in limited supply because in order to short it, you have to use up a lot of computer power, but you can create substitutes.
它只是一种供应有限的东西，因为为了做空它，你必须消耗大量的计算机能力，但你可以创造替代品。
It’s classic.
这很经典。
I’m very interested to watch the crypto community re-learn centuries of monetary economics.
我非常有兴趣观看加密货币社区重新学习几个世纪以来的货币经济学。
It’s classic MV = PY fiat money.
这是经典的 MV = PY 法定货币。
It has value because it has a liquidity use.
它具有价值，因为它具有流动性用途。
It’s useful for anonymous transactions, to put it politely, and it’s in limited supply because it takes money to make it.
礼貌地说，它对于匿名交易很有用，而且供应有限，因为它需要钱才能实现。
But there’s nothing that stops you from making substitutes, and nothing that stops you from making derivative claims on Bitcoin that trade just like Bitcoin.
但没有什么可以阻止你制造替代品，也没有什么可以阻止你对比特币提出衍生品索赔，这些衍生品的交易就像比特币一样。
So, if there’s nothing that stops you from making substitutes or derivative claims, eventually that value has to go to zero.
因此，如果没有什么可以阻止您进行替代品或衍生索赔，最终该价值必须为零。
That can take a long time.
这可能需要很长时间。
So this is it.
所以就是这样。
I’ve written about this too.
我也写过这个。
A market can be very slightly inefficient in rate of return and very highly inefficient in terms of prices.
市场在回报率方面可能非常低效，而在价格方面则可能非常低效。
Shorting Bitcoin wouldn’t work because it can go up for a long time before it goes back down again.
做空比特币是行不通的，因为它可能会上涨很长一段时间，然后才会再次下跌。
If it costs you even a 10th of a percent per year to short the Bitcoin, and if you don’t have the money to stand the mark-to-market losses on the way, that price can be very far out of line.
如果你每年做空比特币的成本甚至是十分之一，而且如果你没有足够的钱来承受按市值计价的损失，那么这个价格可能会非常不合理。
So, 1 percent inefficiency in rate of return can be a factor of two or three in efficiency in terms of prices, and I think we see that all over the place.
因此，回报率 1% 的低效率可能是价格效率的两到三倍，我认为我们到处都能看到这种情况。
Well, let me tell you why I’m maybe not yet converted to the fiscal theory and see if you could change my mind.
好吧，让我告诉你为什么我可能还没有转变为财政理论，看看你是否能改变我的想法。
It’s the same issue with crypto assets as with dollars and T-bills.
加密资产与美元和国库券存在同样的问题。
They’re pretty close substitutes, but they’re not perfect substitutes.
它们是非常接近的替代品，但并不是完美的替代品。
If they’re perfect substitutes, we’re in the world of finance.
如果它们是完美的替代品，那么我们就进入了金融世界。
All the curves are perfectly horizontal.
所有曲线都是完全水平的。
Arbitrage determines everything, and there’s one blade of the scissors.
套利决定一切，剪刀只有一把刀片。
But if they’re even somewhat imperfect substitutes, and I think they are — Ether and Bitcoin, dollars and T-bills — then you’re in the Donald Patinkin world with a downward sloping demand curve based on something — it could be liquidity, could be risks, could be whatever — there’s a downward sloping demand curve, upward-sloping supply curve.
但如果它们甚至是不完美的替代品，而且我认为它们是 —— 以太币和比特币、美元和国债 ——那么你就处于唐纳德·帕廷金的世界中，需求曲线向下倾斜，它基于某种东西 ——可能是流动性，可能是风险，可能是任何东西 —— 有一条向下倾斜的需求曲线，向上倾斜的供给曲线。
It’s the world of Milton Friedman, Irving Fisher, something like the old-fashioned quantity theory.
这是米尔顿·弗里德曼、欧文·费舍尔的世界，有点像老式的数量论。
The fiscal theory is a special case of that when only one blade of the scissors cuts, but then in a lot of settings, I think both blades of the scissors matter.
财政理论是一种特殊情况，当只有一把剪刀刀片切割时，但在很多情况下，我认为剪刀的两把刀片都很重要。
Now, what am I getting wrong there?
现在，我错了什么？
The fiscal theory does not require that money in treasuries are perfect substitutes.
财政理论并不要求国债货币是完美的替代品。
It allows that, which is the lovely fact, given the greater and greater substitutability of all financial assets.
鉴于所有金融资产的可替代性越来越强，它允许这样做，这是一个可爱的事实。
But you can add liquidity demands for all sorts of stuff very easily in the fiscal theory.
但在财政理论中，你可以很容易地添加各种东西的流动性需求。
Liquid treasuries traded — and this is on the run, off the spread, that liquid treasuries have slightly different interest rates than unliquid treasuries.
流动性国债的交易——流动性国债的利率与非流动性国债的利率略有不同，这是在利差之外进行的。
Money can trade at a different interest rate than treasuries.
货币可以以与国债不同的利率进行交易。
No problem whatsoever to have a variety of assets that have a variety of liquid discounts in the fiscal theory.
在财政理论中，拥有各种具有各种流动性折扣的资产是没有任何问题的。
The question is, do these liquidity spreads — do they determine the price level?
问题是，这些流动性利差是否决定了价格水平？
The dog and the tail don’t have to be in exactly the same place.
狗和尾巴不必位于完全相同的位置。
The question is, if you hold the tail, does the dog wag?
问题是，如果你握住尾巴，狗会摇吗？
And the central problem with the view you mentioned — the classic monetary problem — there are these spreads, but the government does not control the quantity of money.
你提到的观点的核心问题是“经典的货币问题”，存在这些利差，但政府不控制货币数量。
Doesn’t even pretend to control the quantity of money anymore.
甚至不再假装控制金钱数量了。
You need a liquidity demand for some special asset money, and you need the government to control its supply if you want that to determine the price level.
你需要对某些特殊资产货币的流动性需求，如果你希望政府控制其供应来决定价格水平，则需要政府控制其供应。
Instead, the price level is determined by fiscal theory, and then the quantities of money versus other assets are determined by people’s desire for various liquidity things.
相反，价格水平是由财政理论决定的，然后货币相对于其他资产的数量是由人们对各种流动性事物的渴望决定的。
All the liquidity ends up doing is, it ends up driving slight interest rate spreads.
流动性最终的作用是，它最终会推动小幅利差。
If the government doesn’t give you enough money, then you have a little bit higher interest rates spread on one asset versus another, but that’s not the key for determining the price level when the government doesn’t control the supply of money.
如果政府没有给你足够的钱，那么一种资产的利差会比另一种资产的利差稍高一些，但这并不是当政府不控制货币供应时决定价格水平的关键。
On reforming health insurance
论医疗保险改革
Healthcare — I’m a big fan of your proposals for what I think you called time-consistent health insurance.
医疗保健 — 我非常支持你关于我认为你所说的时间一致的健康保险的建议。
You buy health insurance and you buy insurance against your premium going up.
您购买健康保险，并针对保费上涨购买保险。
If later on, you develop a serious condition, you’re insured against the fact that your insurance costs more, right?
如果后来你病情严重，你的保险费用就会更高，对吗？
Now, why has no one done this?
现在，为什么没有人这样做呢？
Because it does make sense.
因为它确实有道理。
People did it until it was made illegal.
人们这样做直到它被定为非法。
Who did it?
谁干的？
When?
什么时候？
Where?
在哪里？
God, it was in the 1990s.
天哪，那是在 20 世纪 90 年代。
Which insurance company?
哪家保险公司？
A better word for it that Mike Cannon at Cato came up with is health-status insurance, that you can insure yourself against the risk of getting sick in the future.
卡托公司的迈克·坎农（Mike Cannon）提出了一个更好的说法，那就是健康状况保险，您可以确保自己免受未来生病的风险。
One insurance company started offering the right to buy health insurance in the future if you’re sick now, which essentially, that’s the beginning of the idea.
一家保险公司开始提供如果你现在生病了未来购买健康保险的权利，这本质上就是这个想法的开始。
Also, the good old-fashioned health insurance, starting in the 1990s, was guaranteed renewable, meaning if you bought the health insurance now, you had the right to continue buying that health insurance without your premiums going up if you got sick.
此外，从 20 世纪 90 年代开始，传统的健康保险是有保证可更新的，这意味着如果您现在购买了健康保险，您就有权继续购买该健康保险，而如果您生病了，保费不会上涨。
That’s essentially the same thing as health-status insurance.
这与健康状况保险本质上是一样的。
So private insurance was working its way in this direction.
因此，私人保险正在朝这个方向努力。
But why did it take so long?
但为什么花了这么长时间？
It wasn’t dominant back then, right?
那时它还没有占主导地位，对吗？
This is another example of market inefficiency?
这是市场效率低下的又一个例子吗？
Come on.
快点。
Technical innovation takes a remarkably long time to spread, and this is a technical innovation.
技术创新需要相当长的时间才能传播，这就是技术创新。
One thing is, it takes time for institutional — especially an incredibly regulated industry where you have 50 state regulators who have to bless every single contract — it takes a long time.
有一件事是，对于机构来说需要时间 ——尤其是一个监管极其严格的行业，那里有 50 个州监管机构，他们必须批准每一份合同—— 这需要很长时间。
Then it was made illegal under Obamacare, which is why it wasn’t happening.
然后，根据奥巴马医改法案，它被定为非法，这就是为什么它没有发生。
United Airlines still hasn’t figured out that Southwest knows how to get people on planes faster.
联合航空仍然没有弄清楚西南航空知道如何让人们更快地登机。
That service stuff takes time.
这些服务需要时间。
Why wasn’t this in health insurance to start with?
为什么一开始就不将其纳入健康保险？
When health insurance first started up, there wasn’t this thing of a pre-existing condition, of something that we get news that’s going to make you really expensive.
当健康保险刚兴起时，并没有这种预先存在的疾病，或者我们得到的消息会让你变得非常昂贵的东西。
You either died or you didn’t die, and that was the end of that.
你要么死了，要么没死，那就结束了。
A very expensive health that is very persistent, and where you need insurance against ongoing future expenses — that can’t be done in a one-year contract.
这是一种非常昂贵且持久的健康状况，您需要为未来持续的费用购买保险——这是一年期合同无法做到的。
That’s also something that we didn’t have until the 1960s or ’70s.
这也是我们直到 20 世纪 60 年代或 70 年代才拥有的东西。
Institutions take a while to adapt.
机构需要一段时间来适应。
You got to take a longer-run view here, Tyler.
你必须以更长远的眼光来看待，泰勒。
But I do want to advertise it for listeners who haven’t heard about it.
但我确实想为还没有听说过它的听众做广告。
We’re still in the pre-existing conditions as the original sin of markets, whereby the government must completely screw up your and my healthcare.
我们仍然处于市场原罪的既存状况中，政府必须彻底搞砸你和我的医疗保健。
That is not true.
那不是真的。
Free markets can handle the question of pre-existing conditions, your need for long-term insurance.
自由市场可以解决原有疾病的问题以及您对长期保险的需求。
Term life insurance has had it forever.
定期人寿保险永远拥有它。
If you buy term life insurance when you’re young and healthy, you get to keep that insurance, no matter how sick you get as time goes on.
如果您在年轻健康时购买定期人寿保险，那么无论随着时间的推移您病得有多严重，您都可以保留该保险。
There’s no failure of insurance markets that means we can’t have it.
保险市场的失败并不意味着我们不能拥有它。
How much do you worry about superior genetic information making it hard for insurance to actually serve insurance purposes?
您有多担心优越的遗传信息会导致保险难以真正达到保险目的？
It would be fairly priced if you could buy it, but you’re just paying the value of your treatment plus a small fixed cost.
如果您能购买的话，价格会相当合理，但您只需支付治疗的价值加上少量的固定费用。
You’ve spent too much time teaching Econ 101 where we’re worth 5 percent.
你花了太多时间教授经济学 101，而我们只值 5%。
We figure out that markets can handle 95 percent, and then you’re going to focus on the last 5 percent and tell me, “No, the government’s got to run everything.” Like any insurance, health-status insurance — you have to buy it before information is revealed that you’re sick.
我们发现市场可以处理 95% 的事情，然后你会专注于最后 5% 的事情并告诉我，“不，政府必须管理一切。”与任何保险一样，健康状况保险 ——你必须在你生病的信息被揭露之前购买它。
That’s fairly reasonable.
这是相当合理的。
Now, one answer to that is — let’s do this at the family level — I can buy health-status insurance before I conceive a child, for that child, and then if there’s a genetic problem that’s knowable, then the kid is covered.
现在，一个答案是 ——“让我们在家庭层面这样做”—— 我可以在怀孕之前为那个孩子购买健康状况保险，然后如果存在已知的遗传问题，那么这个孩子就会得到保障。
The other answer is, I will have a perfectly reasonable .
另一个答案是，我会有一个完全合理的答案。
.
。
.
。
Unless you’re at two o’clock in the morning, drinking stuff with libertarians, it is allowable for the government to step in when there’s a very clear market failure.
除非你在凌晨两点和自由主义者一起喝酒，否则当市场出现非常明显的失灵时，政府介入是可以的。
I would be fine with — when we start this up, and you, Tyler, have some known genetic quantity that means you’re going to be more expensive, the government gives you a lump sum.
我同意——当我们开始这项工作时，你，泰勒，有一些已知的基因数量，这意味着你会更贵，政府会一次性给你一笔钱。
“Here’s 50 grand, and we’ll put that in your health-status insurance account, and that will fund your higher insurance payments for the rest of your life.
“这是 50 格兰德，我们会将其存入您的健康状况保险账户，这将为您余生支付更高的保险费用。
See you later.”
稍后见。”
There’s a clear argument for lump-sum transfers to the ex post insurance, mediated by the government.
有一个明确的论点是，在政府的调解下，一次性向事后保险转移。
If that’s all the government did, and then left the rest of the healthcare and insurance industry free to cutthroat, free market, innovative competition, drive out the incumbents, serve you and me better, I’d be fine with it.
如果这就是政府所做的一切，然后让医疗保健和保险行业的其他部分自由参与残酷的自由市场、创新竞争，驱逐现任者，更好地为你和我服务，我会同意的。
Here’s a quotation from you online, which I didn’t follow.
这是你网上引用的一段话，我没看懂。
I’d like for you to explain.
我想让你解释一下。
I think you’re talking about second- or third-best here.
我认为你在这里谈论的是第二或第三好的。
You wrote, “It has made me a tentative supporter of Medicare for any.” What did you mean?
你写道：“这让我成为了任何人的医疗保险的暂时支持者。”你什么意思？
I mean, the biggest original sin I see now in our healthcare system is cross-subsidies.
我的意思是，我现在在我们的医疗保健系统中看到的最大原罪是交叉补贴。
The government wants to provide for poor people and other people.
政府希望为穷人和其他人提供帮助。
It doesn’t want to make them pay — or old people — they don’t want to pay, but the government doesn’t want to raise taxes and provide their healthcare.
它不想让他们付费——或者让老年人付费——他们不想付费，但政府不想提高税收并为他们提供医疗保健。
So, what the government does is, it tells hospitals, for example, “You must treat everybody who walks in the emergency room.” The hospital says, “That’s nice, where do we get money from?” Then the government says, “You can overcharge private employer-provided insurance, which will force employers to give, and you can overcharge the few cash-paying customers who come in.”
因此，政府所做的就是，例如，它告诉医院，“你必须治疗每一个走进急诊室的人。”医院说：“太好了，我们从哪里得到钱呢？”然后政府说，“你可以对私人雇主提供的保险收取过高的费用，这将迫使雇主付出代价，你也可以对少数进来的现金支付客户收取过高的费用。”
The problem with that is you can’t allow competition.
问题是你不能允许竞争。
If you’re overcharging people, then you can’t allow hospital B to come in and say, “We’re going to offer less price, and we won’t even have an emergency room.” So you’ve killed competition.
如果你多收费，你就不能允许B医院进来说：“我们要降价，连急诊室都没有。”所以你已经扼杀了竞争。
That I think is the original sin, the deepest problem in our healthcare system.
我认为这是原罪，是我们医疗保健系统中最深层的问题。
They just recently said hospitals have to disclose prices.
他们最近刚刚表示，医院必须披露价格。
Heavens, disclose prices!
天啊，公布价格吧！
Well, that’s a sign this is a horribly uncompetitive business.
嗯，这表明这是一个极其缺乏竞争力的行业。
An airline that tried to not disclose prices until you get off the plane would be bankrupt because no one would go there.
一家试图在你下飞机之前不透露价格的航空公司将会破产，因为没有人会去那里。
There’s competition in the airlines.
航空公司之间存在竞争。
How do we solve this problem?
我们如何解决这个问题呢？
Just forcing hospitals to post prices — they have to cross-subsidize the Medicare or Medicaid that doesn’t pay anything like what it costs from something else because the government’s not paying.
只是迫使医院公布价格——他们必须对医疗保险或医疗补助进行交叉补贴，这些医疗保险或医疗补助不会像其他项目那样支付任何费用，因为政府不支付。
You and me don’t need health insurance.
你和我不需要健康保险。
We have enough money.
我们有足够的钱。
We need maybe something catastrophic if we get something that costs $10 million, which is, you have to get some really rare form of cancer for that.
如果我们得到的东西要花费 1000 万美元，那么我们可能需要一些灾难性的东西，也就是说，你必须为此得到某种非常罕见的癌症。
You and me could afford to pay for this like we pay for our vet bills.
你和我有能力支付这笔费用，就像我们支付兽医费用一样。
Why can’t we be in the total free market?
为什么我们不能进入完全自由的市场？
Well, because there’s this cross-subsidy rig going on.
嗯，因为这种交叉补贴机制正在发生。
Here’s the deal.
这是交易。
I said “tentatively.” Let the government just forthrightly raise taxes, pay for health insurance for poor people, indigent people.
我说“暂时”。让政府直接提高税收，为穷人、贫困人口支付医疗保险。
We could do a lot better job for the schizophrenics on the streets and for whoever the government wants to pay their healthcare.
我们可以为街上的精神分裂症患者以及政府想要支付医疗费用的任何人做得更好。
Do that on budget.
在预算范围内做到这一点。
Allocate it, so we can all see what the government’s paying for.
分配它，这样我们都可以看到政府付出了什么。
Then you and me can be freed to the mercies of an unbridled competitive free market.
然后你我就可以自由地享受无拘无束的竞争性自由市场的摆布。
If somebody wants to come in and offer us care cheaper and set up a new hospital, they don’t need a certificate of need.
如果有人想进来为我们提供更便宜的护理并建立一家新医院，他们不需要需求证明。
They don’t need all the other stuff.
他们不需要所有其他东西。
They can come in and offer us whatever we’re willing to pay for.
他们可以进来并为我们提供任何我们愿意支付的费用。
We would get far better care, far cheaper, much more medical innovation than we do now.
我们将获得比现在更好的护理、更便宜的价格、更多的医疗创新。
You and me could be free to the wonders of a free market if we would pay taxes to support whatever the government wants to support.
如果我们愿意纳税来支持政府想要支持的任何事情，你和我就可以自由地享受自由市场的奇迹。
Then we can look at the budgets and see what that is.
然后我们可以查看预算，看看预算是什么。
We’re at the worst of all systems right now.
我们现在正处于所有系统中最糟糕的时期。
This system of cross-subsidies is just atrociously wasteful and inefficient.
这种交叉补贴制度极其浪费且效率低下。
It does provide reasonably good care, but at just hugely more expense than it should.
它确实提供了相当好的护理，但费用却比应有的要高得多。
That’s a second best.
这是第二好的。
On flying gliders
关于飞行滑翔机
In the year 2004, you were national gliding champion.
2004年，你是全国滑翔冠军。
Tell us what you achieved.
告诉我们您取得了什么成就。
I fly gliders, which are beautiful-looking airplanes without engines.
我驾驶滑翔机，这是一种没有发动机的漂亮飞机。
The way they work .
他们的工作方式。
.
。
.
。
I was only a champion in one class, which wasn’t the very high-profile class, I have to admit.
我不得不承认，我只是一个班级的冠军，这不是一个非常引人注目的班级。
You competed in the world championship in Hungary, correct?
你参加了匈牙利的世界锦标赛，对吗？
Yes, I did.
是的，我做到了。
I didn’t do that great, but I had a wonderful time in Hungary.
我做得不是很好，但我在匈牙利度过了一段美好的时光。
This is a serious sport.
这是一项严肃的运动。
What you do is, it’s about speed, and you try to find these rising currents of air called thermals, and you glide to the next one.
你所做的就是速度，你试图找到这些被称为热气流的上升气流，然后滑向下一个气流。
Our typical races around here in California will be 200 to 300 miles or more.
我们在加利福尼亚州附近的典型比赛长度为 200 至 300 英里或更长。
I did one at 90 miles an hour last year.
去年我以每小时 90 英里的速度完成了一次。
I’ve done them over 100 miles an hour.
我已经以每小时超过 100 英里的速度完成了这些任务。
This is average over 300 miles of flying without an engine at attitudes up to 18,000 feet around here.
这是在此处周围 18,000 英尺高度的情况下平均飞行超过 300 英里的距离。
Not so high on the East Coast.
东海岸没那么高。
You’re racing these guys.
你正在和这些家伙赛跑。
It’s like a sailboat race in three dimensions at 100 miles an hour, flying out over the deserts in Nevada.
这就像一场以每小时 100 英里的速度进行的三维帆船比赛，飞越内华达州的沙漠。
It’s just absolutely wonderful.
这真是太棒了。
The game is speed.
游戏就是速度。
Can you go to airport A, airport B — and your GPS shows you where you’ve been — and come back, and do it two minutes faster than the other guy?
你能去机场 A、机场 B ——并且你的 GPS 显示你去过哪里吗 ——然后回来，并且比其他人快两分钟吗？
How good or bad is the government’s regulation of gliding?
政府对滑翔运动的监管有多好或多坏？
An uneasy truce.
不稳定的休战。
Pretty bad, but just enough to let it survive.
相当糟糕，但足以让它生存。
The government regulates —
政府监管 —
What’s the main inefficiency?
主要的效率低下是什么？
The FAA.
美国联邦航空局。
What should they do that they don’t?
哪些是他们应该做而没有做的？
What should they allow?
他们应该允许什么？
They have killed the domestic industry that makes gliders.
他们扼杀了国内滑翔机制造行业。
There’re only a couple left in Europe.
欧洲只剩下一对了。
Certification of aircraft under the FAA is a disaster.
美国联邦航空局对飞机的认证是一场灾难。
This is more visible in general aviation power.
这一点在通用航空力量上体现得更加明显。
Go down to your local airport, and you will see what looks like a Cuban car lot full of designs from the 1950s.
前往当地机场，您会看到一个古巴汽车停车场，里面充满了 20 世纪 50 年代的设计。
It’s just incredibly difficult to certify a general aviation airplane.
认证通用航空飞机非常困难。
Their standards for pilots’ licenses are ridiculously too high.
他们对飞行员执照的标准太高了。
America is one of the best places in the world.
美国是世界上最好的地方之一。
When you go around the world, you will notice — if you’re a pilot — how empty the skies are because everywhere else has regulated general aviation completely to death.
当你环游世界时，你会发现 —— 如果你是一名飞行员 —— 天空是多么空旷，因为其他地方对通用航空的监管已经彻底死了。
The private rules associated with gliding — are they Coasian and wealth maximizing?
与滑翔相关的私人规则 ——它们是科斯主义的还是财富最大化的？
Or are they all screwed up?
还是他们都搞砸了？
I served for a while on the rules committee that sets the rules for gliding competitions, which was a wonderful experience as far as me understanding political economy and just what’s wrong with Congress.
我在制定滑翔比赛规则的规则委员会任职了一段时间，就我了解政治经济学和国会的问题而言，这是一次美妙的经历。
I had all sorts of wonderful ideas on the scale of health-status insurance and my proposal to reform the issuance of treasury bonds that went exactly as far in the rules committee as my proposals have gone in Washington.
我对健康状况保险的规模和改革国债发行的提议有各种各样的奇妙想法，这些想法在规则委员会中的进展与我在华盛顿的提议一样深入。
It’s interesting.
这很有趣。
Eventually, reason prevails.
最终，理性占了上风。
Many of the psychological biases you see in many sports are there — the denial.
你在许多运动中看到的许多心理偏见都存在——“否认”。
I was a safety advocate, so I had some rules in mind that wouldn’t hurt the competition, but would do a lot to increase the safety of this thing.
我是一名安全倡导者，所以我心里有一些规则，这些规则不会损害比赛，但会大大提高这个东西的安全性。
All the same things that .
都是一样的事情。
.
。
.
。
Bicycle racers said, “Oh, we can’t have helmets.
自行车运动员说：“哦，我们没有头盔。
We won’t be able to see.” Glider pilots have the same response to any rules that make things a little bit safer.
我们将看不到。”滑翔机飞行员对任何让事情变得更安全的规则都有同样的反应。
It was a great education.
这是一次很棒的教育。
There’s finance economist John Cochrane, policy economist and blogger and reformer John Cochrane, and glider and gliding reformer John Cochrane.
其中包括金融经济学家约翰·科克伦、政策经济学家、博客作者和改革家约翰·科克伦，以及滑翔机和滑翔机改革家约翰·科克伦。
How do they all fit together?
它们如何组合在一起？
How many dimensions are needed to explain the whole John Cochrane here?
需要多少个维度才能解释整个约翰·科克伦？
Well, I think it’s all totally consistent, part of one piece.
嗯，我认为这一切都是完全一致的，是一个整体的一部分。
What’s the consistent theme that one sees in the gliding as well as the thinking about gliding?
人们在滑翔中看到的一致主题以及对滑翔的思考是什么？
We’re all bad at reflecting what our own mental strengths and weaknesses are.
我们都不善于反映自己的心理优势和劣势。
I try to reduce things down to a very few fundamental principles and a logical structure.
我尝试将事情简化为很少的基本原则和逻辑结构。
When I was in college, I was a physics major.
当我上大学时，我主修物理。
I was great at physics, and I nearly flunked chemistry because physics .
我在物理方面表现出色，但由于物理原因，我化学差点不及格。
.
。
.
。
My peak intellectually was electricity magnetism, where there’re three equations, and everything follows from that.
我的智力巅峰是电磁学，它有三个方程，一切都由此而来。
My book on asset pricing — we start with one equation, and it has three sides, and everything follows from that.
我关于资产定价的书 —— 我们从一个方程开始，它有三个边，一切都由此而来。
Similarly, I did some work in gliding, trying to apply optimal portfolio theory to the theory of optimal gliding.
同样，我在滑翔方面做了一些工作，试图将最优投资组合理论应用到最优滑翔理论中。
I’ve tried to put things together in a logical structure.
我尝试将事物以逻辑结构组合在一起。
Fiscal Theory of the Price Level — the damn book’s up to 600 pages, and I’m trying to think about all of monetary policy in the structure of one simple present value equation.
《物价水平的财政理论》——这该死的书有 600 页，我正试图在一个简单的现值方程的结构中思考所有的货币政策。
That’s my habit of mind.
这就是我的思维习惯。
I really admire people with different habits of mind.
我真的很佩服有着不同思维习惯的人。
My historian friends who can keep unbelievable numbers of facts and their citations in their head at one time — I just can’t do that.
我的历史学家朋友们，他们可以一次在脑子里记住大量令人难以置信的事实及其引用 —— 我就是做不到这一点。
Mathematician friends who are great at seeing logical structure of things without the vision — I admire that.
数学家朋友们很擅长在没有视觉的情况下看到事物的逻辑结构 —— 我很佩服这一点。
But that’s my one uniting theme.
但这是我唯一的统一主题。
On what Cochrane learned from family
科克伦从家人那里学到了什么
Now, I knew your father’s work before I ever had heard of you, in particular, his book on historians and historiography of the Italian Renaissance.
现在，我在听说你之前就知道你父亲的作品，特别是他关于意大利文艺复兴时期的历史学家和史学的书。
That’s Eric Cochrane, for those of you who don’t know.
对于那些不知道的人来说，这是埃里克·科克伦（Eric Cochrane）。
What is it intellectually that you learned from your father?
你从你父亲那里学到了什么智力？
Oh my God, so much.
天哪，这么多。
This tells you something about —
这告诉你一些关于 ——
It’s a great book, by the way.
顺便说一句，这是一本很棒的书。
Everybody else who’s ever heard of my father, heard of Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, which is the one I’ll recommend online.
所有听说过我父亲的人都听说过被遗忘的世纪中的佛罗伦萨，这就是我在网上推荐的那个。
If you’ve read the historiography book, it says .
如果你读过历史编纂书，它会说。
.
。
.
。
I don’t know how you do it — you’ve read everything that there is, which is a big thing.
我不知道你是怎么做到的 —— 你已经阅读了所有的内容，这是一件大事。
He was a major influence in my life.
他对我的生活产生了重大影响。
One, the historical perspective — I think that a lot.
一，历史视角 —— 我认为很多。
The writing in Forgotten Centuries was wonderful.
《被遗忘的世纪》的写作非常精彩。
My best-read paper of any is “Writing Tips for PhD Students,” which passes along a lot of Eric Cochrane’s writing tips for his history graduate students.
我读得最好的论文是《博士生写作技巧》，其中向他的历史研究生传达了埃里克·科克伦 (Eric Cochrane) 的许多写作技巧。
He’s an unusual man.
他是一个不寻常的人。
He took us to Florence, where I spent a lot of time as a kid, and forced us into the local culture.
他带我们去了佛罗伦萨，我小时候在那里度过了很多时光，并迫使我们融入当地文化。
He was also very connected to the community of the Southside of Chicago, sent me to public schools there, which was another culture, so I certainly learned to navigate other cultures.
他与芝加哥南区的社区也有非常密切的联系，将我送到那里的公立学校，这是另一种文化，所以我当然学会了驾驭其他文化。
We had a fantastic dinner table where I cut my teeth on many things intellectually.
我们吃了一顿很棒的晚餐，在那里我在很多智力上接触到了很多东西。
I don’t agree with everything he did.
我不同意他所做的一切。
He was a converted Catholic who was also a historian and read the minutes of the Council of Trent in the original Latin.
他是一位皈依天主教的人，也是一位历史学家，并阅读了特伦特会议的拉丁文会议纪要。
That was a challenge for a 16-year-old atheist, but there’s a lot of that left in me.
这对于一个 16 岁的无神论者来说是一个挑战，但对我来说还有很多挑战。
Now, I also knew your mother’s work before I knew your work, in particular, her translations of Paolo Rossi, especially Rossi on Vico.
现在，在我知道你的作品之前，我也知道你母亲的作品，特别是她对保罗·罗西的翻译，尤其是《罗西对维柯》的翻译。
What is it intellectually that you learned from your mother?
你从你母亲那里学到了什么智力？
I didn’t know any of this about you until preparing for this podcast I might add.
在准备这个我可能会补充的播客之前，我对你一无所知。
I’m just amazed at the range.
我只是对范围感到惊讶。
Yes, my mother — she taught French at the Lab Schools while I was growing up — a remarkable woman.
是的，我的母亲 ——“在我成长的过程中，她在实验室学校教法语”——是一位了不起的女性。
After my father died, sadly, just as I got back to the University of Chicago, she took on this career of translating and translated many, many books for the University of Chicago Press.
可悲的是，我父亲去世后，当我回到芝加哥大学时，她开始从事翻译工作，为芝加哥大学出版社翻译了很多很多书籍。
I would occasionally read what she translated — academic books from French and Italian into English.
我偶尔会读她翻译的学术书籍，从法语和意大利语翻译成英语。
Have you ever tried to read academic history French?
您是否尝试过阅读法语学术史？
Oh, my God.
我的天啊。
She managed to make sense of that stuff as well.
她也设法理解了这些东西。
Yes, she was the other part of that dinner table where I both learned a lot and I learned to think.
是的，她是餐桌上的另一部分，我在那里学到了很多东西，也学会了思考。
Then they listened to kids.
然后他们听了孩子们的讲话。
Even when they had academic friends around, they listened to kids.
即使他们周围有学术朋友，他们也会倾听孩子们的意见。
I was expected to show up and play my part.
我应该出现并发挥我的作用。
Except for the one time when I was 12 years old, and we had a bunch of historians over, and I piped up and said to my dad, “Dad, what’s the Council of Trent anyway?” He said, “Oh my God.” I could see the look on his face, “Oh, I haven’t told my kid anything.”
除了我 12 岁时的一次，我们邀请了一群历史学家过来，我大声对我爸爸说：“爸爸，特伦特会议到底是什么？”他说：“天哪。”我可以看到他脸上的表情，“哦，我什么都没告诉我的孩子。”
But on the other hand, my wife, Beth Fama, did the same thing at age 12.
但另一方面，我的妻子贝丝·法玛 (Beth Fama) 在 12 岁时也做了同样的事情。
Looked up at that dinner table full of finance people and said, “Dad, what’s arbitrage?”
抬头看着餐桌上坐满了金融人士，说道：“爸爸，什么是套利？”
Now, your wife is also a well-known author.
现在，你的妻子也是一位著名作家。
She has a well-received book about mermaids, right?
她有一本关于美人鱼的书很受欢迎，对吧？
It’s fiction.
这是虚构的。
It’s called Monstrous Beauty.
它的名字叫《怪物之美》。
How has having a wife who writes fiction influenced you intellectually?
有一个写小说的妻子对你的智力有何影响？
Yes, she’s really smart.
是的，她真的很聪明。
She’s not only a fiction writer.
她不仅仅是一位小说作家。
She has a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago and a smart person in all sorts of ways.
她拥有芝加哥大学经济学博士学位，在各方面都是一个聪明人。
We don’t really do economics at the dinner table together, but we certainly learn a lot about politics and current events.
我们并没有真正在餐桌上一起讨论经济学，但我们确实学到了很多关于政治和时事的知识。
I don’t delve too deep in her fiction, but it’s a very intellectual pursuit for her, and she’s really committed to writing great young adult literature, not just stuff that sells.
我并没有太深入地研究她的小说，但这对她来说是一种非常理智的追求，而且她真的致力于写伟大的年轻成人文学，而不仅仅是畅销的东西。
Yes, Monstrous Beauty is wonderful.
是的，《妖孽之美》太精彩了。
Plus One is her book after that, which I recommend.
Plus One 是她之后的书，我推荐。
It’s a secretly libertarian young-adult romance set in a world that comes after a pandemic.
这是一部秘密的自由主义青年浪漫故事，背景发生在大流行之后的世界。
Ought to have lots of good book sales now.
现在应该有很多好的图书销售。
You think Tuscan cuisine is underrated or overrated?
您认为托斯卡纳美食被低估还是高估了？
Tuscan cuisine is wonderful .
托斯卡纳美食很棒。
What’s your favorite in Tuscan cuisine?
您最喜欢托斯卡纳美食中的什么？
Oh my God, where do you start?
天啊，你从哪里开始呢？
The simple.
简单的。
There’s nothing like a ribollita on a cold winter day.
在寒冷的冬日里，没有什么比 ribollita 更好的了。
Tuscan cuisine is supposed to be simple, not fancy.
托斯卡纳美食应该是简单的，而不是花哨的。
On culture changes
关于文化变革
Conquest’s Second Law, sometimes called O’Sullivan’s Law — it says that organizations not explicitly set up as right wing tend to evolve to become left wing.
征服第二定律，有时也称为奥沙利文定律——它说，没有明确设立为右翼的组织往往会演变为左翼。
Why is this true?
为什么这是真的？
Organizationally, what happens?
从组织上来说，会发生什么？
That certainly is a trenchant observation of the current time.
这无疑是对当前时代的尖锐观察。
I pause to think whether that’s true of all places and times.
我停下来思考是否所有地点和时间都是如此。
We live in a time when this cultural elite is moving sharply left in a sort of religious revival, a great awokening.
我们生活在这样一个时代，文化精英正在以某种宗教复兴、伟大的觉醒的方式急剧左转。
The Ford Foundation now is sharply left — hilarious when you consider who Henry Ford was.
福特基金会现在是极左派——当你想到亨利·福特是谁时，你会觉得很搞笑。
That’s a great example.
这是一个很好的例子。
All of our universities.
我们所有的大学。
Noncompetitive institutions are moving sharply left.
非竞争性机构正在急剧左移。
The institutions of civil society are moving sharply left, but that’s not always the case.
公民社会的机构正在急剧左移，但情况并非总是如此。
There was a Reagan-Thatcher counterrevolution in the 1970s.
20世纪70年代发生了里根-撒切尔反革命。
There’s the natural tendency — people in a comfortable society start feeling guilty and telling other people what to do and how the government should spend other people’s money.
有一种自然趋势——“生活在舒适社会的人们开始感到内疚，并告诉别人该做什么以及政府应该如何花别人的钱。
Why are economists right now moving so much to the left?
为什么经济学家现在如此左倾？
What’s the most structural explanation for the mistake they’re making, the highest-order account of what’s going on?
对于他们所犯的错误，最结构性的解释是什么？对正在发生的事情的最高层次的解释是什么？
Well, economists have always been left, right?
嗯，经济学家一直都是左派，对吧？
The American economists —
美国经济学家 ——
But they’re much more left than 20 years ago.
但与 20 年前相比，他们的剩余数量要多得多。
Yes, and passing that on.
是的，并将其传递下去。
I think the single greatest .
我认为最伟大的一个。
.
。
.
。
No, you’re right.
不，你是对的。
Well, economists — the question is, why has the left current within economics become more powerful?
好吧，经济学家们——问题是，为什么经济学界的左派势力变得更加强大？
It always was — not left–right — a free market versus interventionist debate.
这始终是“——不是左翼——右翼”——自由市场与干预主义的辩论。
That is the debate of all time.
这是一直以来的争论。
Free market versus interventionist.
自由市场与干预主义。
Left ideology gives you a moral basis on which to go out and try to run things.
左翼意识形态为你提供了出去尝试管理事物的道德基础。
Lots of people go into economics because they want to save the world.
许多人进入经济学领域是因为他们想拯救世界。
Then you take some classes that say the best way to save the world is to stay the heck out of the way, and that’s discouraging if you’re a young millennial who wants to go and save the world, so we go find —
然后你参加一些课程，这些课程说拯救世界的最好方法就是远离，如果你是一个想要拯救世界的年轻千禧一代，这会令人沮丧，所以我们去寻找 -
But that’s a levels explanation, right?
但这是一个层次的解释，对吧？
Not a change explanation.
不是变更说明。
I don’t know.
我不知道。
You got to give me three.
你得给我三个。
I’ll choose a, b, or c.
我会选择a、b或c。
Well, some of it could be the demographic composition of who becomes an economist has changed, I believe.
嗯，我认为，部分原因可能是成为经济学家的人口构成发生了变化。
There’re many more foreigners.
还有很多外国人。
I’m not sure of the net effect there.
我不确定那里的净效应。
It could also mean you just have more political spectra floating around, but I think non-Americans, on average, are more interventionist than Americans.
这也可能意味着你有更多的政治光谱，但我认为，平均而言，非美国人比美国人更倾向于干预。
At least in terms of the flow of younger people, I believe there are more women.
至少从年轻人的流动来看，我相信女性更多。
Women, on average, are further to the left than are men, especially educated women who are probably not yet married.
平均而言，女性比男性更左，尤其是受过教育但可能尚未结婚的女性。
I’m not sure those are the reasons.
我不确定这些是原因。
That’s what pops into my mind.
这就是我脑海中浮现的想法。
Okay, good.
好的，很好。
Now we can have a debate.
现在我们可以进行辩论了。
I don’t think that’s true.
我认为那不是真的。
Many of the foreigners I know come from socialist-y or much more interventionist countries, saying, “Oh my God, I love this free place.” Talk to an Argentinian about government.
我认识的许多外国人来自社会主义国家或干预主义程度更高的国家，他们说：“天哪，我喜欢这个自由的地方。”与阿根廷人谈论政府。
I know a lot of libertarian foreigners.
我认识很多自由主义的外国人。
Economics is a classic case of the wonders of free immigration because — listeners may not know — many economics departments — there’s few native-born Americans left.
经济学是自由移民奇迹的一个经典案例，因为 — 听众可能不知道 — 许多经济系 — 土生土长的美国人所剩无几。
We have scooped up the talent from around the world, and they bring with them some political inclinations.
我们从世界各地挖来人才，他们也带来了一些政治倾向。
So you’re right.
所以你是对的。
Some of them tend to be more lefty.
他们中的一些人往往是左撇子。
Some of them tend to look at where they come from.
他们中的一些人倾向于关注自己来自哪里。
The people pushing back against Princeton’s latest woke outbursts are Eastern Europeans who say, “Hey, guys, socialism — we were there.
反对普林斯顿最近觉醒爆发的人是东欧人，他们说：“嘿，伙计们，社会主义 ——我们就在那里。
You don’t want it.”
你不想要它。
Foreigners, I do think, are driving the other unfortunate feature of contemporary economics — its increasing careerism.
我确实认为，外国人正在推动当代经济学的另一个不幸特征——日益增长的名利主义。
People don’t go to a university .
人们不去大学。
.
。
.
。
When I first got my job and the dean started telling me about the retirement program, I was just glazing over.
当我第一次找到工作时，院长开始告诉我有关退休计划的事情，我只是茫然无措。
“What are you talking about?
“你在说什么？
I’m not going to be here then.” Now, people seem to regard their progression in a company the way the labor markets work in Italy.
到时候我就不会在这里了。”现在，人们似乎将自己在公司的晋升视为意大利劳动力市场的运作方式。
That’s an unfortunate feature of ours.
这是我们的一个不幸的特点。
There’s not that many in economics.
经济学领域的人并不多。
What’s driving the woke-y leftyism in economics is the millennials, the American-born millennials who’ve been through our school systems and our colleges, which teach this kind of stuff.
推动经济学中觉醒的左翼主义的是千禧一代，这些出生在美国的千禧一代，他们经历过我们的学校系统和大学，教授这类东西。
If there’s anything different about the demographic composition, it’s that people like me can’t be in economics anymore.
如果说人口构成有什么不同的话，那就是像我这样的人不能再从事经济学了。
People like Gene Fama can’t be in economics anymore.
像吉恩·法玛这样的人不能再从事经济学了。
Gene Fama — he did his internship when he was an undergrad; he worked in the steel mills.
Gene Fama ——他在本科时就实习过；他在钢铁厂工作。
I applied to be an economics graduate student on a lark one month before classes start.
我在开课前一个月临时申请了一名经济学研究生。
You can’t do that anymore.
你不能再这样做了。
You have to be deeply ingrained in the system, starting as an undergraduate.
从本科生开始，你就必须在这个系统中根深蒂固。
Maybe there’s a self-perpetuation in that sense that wasn’t there in the much more freewheeling earlier era.
也许在这个意义上存在着一种自我延续，而这在更随心所欲的早期时代是不存在的。
How would you reform the economics profession to make it better along these dimensions?
您将如何改革经济学专业，使其在这些方面变得更好？
You’re in charge.
你负责。
You pick the reforms as if you would run the whole gliding committee.
你选择改革就好像你要管理整个滑翔委员会一样。
What would you do?
你会怎么办？
Well, that’s a hard question for a libertarian because — COWEN: No, it is voluntary.
嗯，这对于自由主义者来说是一个难题，因为 - COWEN：不，这是自愿的。
Voluntary rules, but you set them.
自愿规则，但由你制定。
People can secede if they don’t like it.
如果人们不喜欢它，他们可以退出。
You can make a tenure clock.
你可以制作一个任期时钟。
Ten years everywhere.
到处都是十年。
You could make it two years.
你可以坚持两年。
You could abolish tenure.
你可以废除终身教职。
A lot of different things you could do.
你可以做很多不同的事情。
I’d have to obey some much harder rules here, that I’m not allowed to put myself in charge.
我在这里必须遵守一些更严格的规则，即我不被允许自己负责。
We have to somehow obey competition.
我们必须以某种方式服从竞争。
There’s a remarkable lack of competition among universities.
大学之间明显缺乏竞争。
Let’s get rid of the entire legal structure of the nonprofit organization to start with.
让我们首先摆脱非营利组织的整个法律结构。
I think that’ll lead to getting rid of tenure.
我认为这将导致废除终身教职。
Tenure is useful for one thing.
终身任职有其用处之一。
It forces people to make a decision.
它迫使人们做出决定。
Tenure is not about the permanent employment.
任期并不意味着永久就业。
It’s about, when do you get to have a vote on who else gets to be in this place?
问题是，你什么时候才能投票决定还有谁可以进入这个地方？
It forces people to sit down and read the damn papers and say, “Should we keep Tyler on or not?” That’s kind of a useful thing, but you can have those without tenure.
它迫使人们坐下来阅读那些该死的报纸并问自己：“我们应该让泰勒继续工作吗？”这是一件有用的事情，但你可以在没有终身职位的情况下拥有它们。
I have to go back to my libertarian instincts and say what we need is a healthy dose of competition in this business and —
我必须回到我的自由主义本能，说我们需要的是这个行业的健康竞争，并且 -
But why is for-profit education done so poorly?
但为什么营利性教育做得这么差呢？
We’ve had a lot of it.
我们已经经历过很多了。
We’ve had it in other countries like the Philippines.
我们在菲律宾等其他国家也有过这种情况。
Turkey in earlier decades, had a lot of for-profits.
土耳其在前几十年有很多营利性活动。
They seem to disappear largely for market-based reasons.
它们的消失似乎主要是由于市场原因。
Oh, no, they’re in a competition with a heavily government-subsidized sector.
哦，不，他们正在与政府大力补贴的行业竞争。
Some of the for-profit charter schools, I gather, are doing a bang-up job.
据我所知，一些营利性特许学校的表现非常出色。
The big problem with being a nonprofit .
作为非营利组织的大问题。
.
。
.
。
A nonprofit is protected from the market for corporate control.
非营利组织受到保护，不受公司控制权市场的影响。
If Stanford is screwing up, you can’t just buy up all the shares, kick out the management, and improve it.
如果斯坦福大学搞砸了，你不能只是买下所有股份，赶走管理层，然后改进它。
That’s also part of the secret of why hospitals are so screwed up — because they are also protected from that market.
这也是医院陷入困境的部分秘密——因为它们也受到了市场的保护。
The whole nonprofit business — this is a side issue which we should talk about some time — the nonprofit status in the US has been, like everything else, horribly misused.
整个非营利组织——“这是一个我们应该讨论一下的次要问题”——“美国的非营利组织地位，就像其他一切一样，被严重滥用了。
Now it’s a cover.
现在它是一个封面。
A lot of it is a cover for getting out of the estate tax and for subsidizing political activity at taxpayer expense.
其中很大一部分是为了逃避遗产税和用纳税人的钱补贴政治活动的掩护。
I was trying to think of things that open it up to competition better.
我试图思考如何更好地开放竞争。
If we have to think about routes, ways to change things .
如果我们必须考虑路线、改变事物的方法。
.
。
.
。
You make me benevolent dictator.
你让我成为仁慈的独裁者。
Yes, I think there’s a lot of different ways we could run journals.
是的，我认为我们可以通过很多不同的方式来运营期刊。
I think putting things to the market test of ideas would be a lot more helpful.
我认为将想法投入市场测试会更有帮助。
But we’ve got to face the fact that a lot of the market is, who wants economists?
但我们必须面对这样一个事实：市场上很多人都想要经济学家？
The Federal Reserve wants economists to justify what the Federal Reserve is doing.
美联储希望经济学家证明美联储所做的事情是合理的。
The regulatory agencies want economists to justify what the regulators are doing.
监管机构希望经济学家证明监管机构所做的事情是合理的。
A lot of the market for economists is government intervention, so they’re going to turn out a product that justifies government intervention when faced with the market.
对于经济学家来说，很多市场都是政府干预，所以他们在面对市场时会推出一种产品来证明政府干预是合理的。
On Cochrane’s intellectual development
论科克伦的智力发展
How did you become a libertarian?
你是如何成为自由主义者的？
Long period of reflection, and it was.
经过长时间的反思，确实如此。
I grew up in kind of a liberal community and was unthinkingly that.
我是在一个自由主义社会中长大的，并且不假思索地就是这样。
You just start reading, and you read classic things.
你刚开始读书，你就会读经典的东西。
I told you, my habit of mind is to put things in logical structure.
我告诉过你，我的思维习惯是把事情按逻辑结构排列。
If you start thinking cause and effect in logical structure, and not just my feelings about things and the government has to jump, then you are drawn to the classic reading list I had as well as you had.
如果你开始在逻辑结构中思考因果关系，而不仅仅是我对事物和政府的感受必须跳跃，那么你就会被我和你的经典阅读清单所吸引。
I had some conversion moments.
我有一些转变的时刻。
So this is how I became an economist, really.
这就是我成为一名经济学家的真正原因。
It’s the same thing, which is understanding social problems as dispassionate cause-and-effect things and recognizing how they didn’t work otherwise.
这是同一件事，即将社会问题理解为冷静的因果关系，并认识到否则它们是如何发挥作用的。
I’ll tell you two.
我告诉你两个。
One was I was a kid reading the newspaper, actually, in Italy — there was a plan.
一是我小时候读报纸，实际上，在意大利——有一个计划。
The government of Tuscany — there’s a problem with vipers.
托斯卡纳政府 —— 存在毒蛇问题。
These are little poisonous snakes, and the government of Tuscany said, “We’ll get rid of the vipers.
这些是小毒蛇，托斯卡纳政府说：“我们将消灭这些毒蛇。
We’ll give a bounty of 1,000 lire per viper, and that’ll clean up the viper problem.”
我们将为每条毒蛇悬赏 1,000 里拉，这将解决毒蛇问题。”
Well, these dirty farmers of the Casentino found out that they could raise vipers.
好吧，卡森蒂诺这些肮脏的农民发现他们可以饲养毒蛇。
At 1,000 lire per viper, they could raise a lot of vipers fast, and the supply would overwhelm the demand.
按照每条毒蛇 1,000 里拉的价格，他们可以快速饲养大量毒蛇，并且供应将超过需求。
Stories of well-intentioned ideas that have unintended consequences that rank this.
善意的想法却产生意想不到的后果的故事对此进行了排名。
There’s cause and effect.
有因有果。
That fits in lovely.
很适合可爱。
The other one — my big conversion moment — I remember it.
另一个 —— 我的重大转变时刻 —— 我记得它。
It’s the 1970s.
现在是 20 世纪 70 年代。
I was taking a class in microeconomics, and this was a time when welfare was a big problem.
我正在上微观经济学课程，当时福利是一个大问题。
On one hand with the destruction of the black family was in the air.
一方面，黑族的毁灭已在空中。
You could see the dysfunction in the south side of Chicago where I lived — lots of moralizing about it.
你可以看到我居住的芝加哥南区的功能失调——对此有很多说教。
And I saw the budget constraint facing a teenage woman of not many means.
我看到了一个财力不多的少女所面临的预算限制。
It said if you have a kid and don’t work, we’ll give you an apartment and some money, and then there’s that kink in the budget constraint.
上面说，如果你有孩子并且不工作，我们会给你一套公寓和一些钱，然后预算限制就出现了问题。
What I saw was eye-opening to someone attuned to many different cultures.
我所看到的让一个适应多种不同文化的人大开眼界。
It was, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” We’re all the same.
它是，“就在那里，如果没有上帝的恩典，我就去吧。”我们都一样。
We just face different budget constraints.
我们只是面临不同的预算限制。
Here’s an analysis of a social problem, a deep social problem, that’s just completely cause and effect, and we know how to fix this, and you don’t have to get into morals and psychology and religion and all the rest of it.
这是对一个社会问题的分析，一个深刻的社会问题，这完全是因果关系，我们知道如何解决这个问题，你不必涉及道德、心理学、宗教以及其他所有内容。
That was my conversion point as an economist.
那是我作为经济学家的转变点。
Once you start thinking that way, you end up as a libertarian.
一旦你开始这样思考，你最终就会成为一个自由主义者。
Now I’m a libertarian with many adjectives in front of it: conservative, rule of law, Pax Americana.
现在我是一个自由主义者，前面有很多形容词：保守、法治、美国治下的和平。
There’re many different brands of libertarian.
自由主义者有很多不同的品牌。
Should more economists blog?
应该有更多的经济学家写博客吗？
You’re doing it, right?
你正在做，对吧？
We were all surprised when we saw you doing it.
当我们看到你这样做时，我们都很惊讶。
Well, I don’t like the competition, so no, stay out of it, guys.
好吧，我不喜欢竞争，所以不，别参与其中，伙计们。
Everybody else in any business — the first thing any businessman does is try to get rid of the competition.
任何行业中的其他人——任何商人所做的第一件事就是试图摆脱竞争。
The blog is an interesting art form.
博客是一种有趣的艺术形式。
I don’t know how long it will last.
我不知道它会持续多久。
It allows me to write short essays quickly that seem to have some following, even though I should edit each of them for a week and make them better.
它使我能够快速写出似乎有一些后续内容的短文，尽管我应该对每一篇文章进行一周的编辑并使其变得更好。
I found that a useful way to get ideas out and to hear from other people.
我发现这是一种表达想法和听取他人意见的有用方法。
I think that forum is good.
我觉得那个论坛不错
Our academic journals are a disaster, and blogs seem to be an interesting way to get ideas back and forth in economics.
我们的学术期刊是一场灾难，而博客似乎是一种交流经济学思想的有趣方式。
They merge economics and politics.
他们将经济和政治融为一体。
I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad idea.
我不知道这是一个好主意还是坏主意。
The problem with all of us doing it is, I think what we’re seeing in the market is less blog, which is a personal brand name, and more of the Vox, Quillette, and so forth — curated things that are not publications.
我们所有人这样做的问题是，我认为我们在市场上看到的博客越来越少，这是一个个人品牌名称，而更多的是 Vox、Quillette 等等 ——非出版物的策划内容。
It’s really a question about what’s the right format for getting essay-length things into the debate more quickly, both on actual economics and economics and politics.
这实际上是一个关于什么是正确的格式才能让论文长度的内容更快地进入辩论的问题，无论是关于实际经济学还是经济和政治。
Last question: after you finish your 600-page book on The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level, what is it you think you will do next?
最后一个问题：在您读完这本 600 页的《价格水平的财政理论》一书后，您认为下一步会做什么？
My problem in life is that my list of great projects, earthshaking projects, is growing as I get older and try to bite them off, so I have to pick one or the other.
我生活中的问题是，随着年龄的增长，我的伟大项目、惊天动地的项目清单越来越多，并试图把它们咬掉，所以我必须选择一个或另一个。
Which one do I want to pick?
我想选哪一个？
Of course, one should finish what one has started.
当然，已经开始的事情就应该完成。
The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level was going to be something that included the theory and how it explains all of historical experience with inflation, money, and so forth.
价格水平的财政理论将包括该理论以及它如何解释所有有关通货膨胀、货币等的历史经验。
I’m at 600 pages.
我有 600 页。
I haven’t finished the theory part, so one should do that.
我还没有完成理论部分，所以应该这样做。
One needs to understand.
需要一个人去理解。
I still don’t know that I have a good story for the inflation of ’70s and ’80s, which is a gaping hole.
我仍然不知道我对 70 年代和 80 年代的通货膨胀有一个好故事，这是一个巨大的漏洞。
So I should finish that, but I probably won’t.
所以我应该完成它，但我可能不会。
I did mention, I think, that why that takes so much trading to get information into prices — that’s a big unknown thing about asset markets, so I’m tempted to go back to that.
我确实提到过，我认为，为什么需要如此多的交易才能将信息转化为价格——这是资产市场的一大未知数，所以我很想回到这一点。
Part of me wants to go into political philosophy.
我的一部分想要进入政治哲学。
The danger of libertarians is .
自由主义者的危险是。
.
。
.
。
Oh, what was the question you asked me?
哦，你问我的问题是什么？
Make me king for a day.
让我当一天国王。
Well, make us king for a day, and we could solve most of the problems of the American economy in about 10 minutes flat, yet our Congress doesn’t do it.
好吧，让我们当一天国王，我们可以在大约 10 分钟内解决美国经济的大部分问题，但我们的国会却没有这样做。
What is there about our political system that is unable to come to these sensible cause-and-effect, obvious solutions to obvious problems?
我们的政治制度有什么地方不能对明显的问题得出这些合理的因果关系、明显的解决方案呢？
Interesting — America had this amazing flowering of political engineering in 1790, and we seem to have just lived in the building ever since and not really done a great job of thinking about it.
有趣的是，美国在 1790 年经历了政治工程的惊人繁荣，从那以后我们似乎就一直住在这栋大楼里，并没有真正认真地思考它。
In any scientific pursuit, you need to start with answers, not with questions.
在任何科学追求中，你都需要从答案开始，而不是从问题开始。
If you start with big questions, you’re never going to get anywhere.
如果你从大问题开始，你永远不会有任何进展。
I think I have some answers, but that certainly strikes me as a question.
我想我已经有了一些答案，但这确实是一个问题。
How can we better engineer our political organization — kind of a constitutional moment — to produce the better economic outcomes that you and I know are there and just sitting —
我们如何才能更好地设计我们的政治组织 ——“某种宪法时刻”——“以产生更好的经济成果，而你我都知道，就在那里？”
You and I are techno-optimists, where I think we think that the US, the world could be vastly wealthier, healthier, and cleaner if just the regulatory state would get out of the way.
你和我都是技术乐观主义者，我认为，如果监管国家不加干涉，美国和世界可能会变得更加富裕、更健康、更清洁。
And that’s a political question — a political economy, political structure, constitutional question, I think, so I’m tempted to turn my attention to that.
这是一个政治问题——我认为是一个政治经济、政治结构、宪法问题，所以我很想把注意力转向这个问题。
John Cochrane, thank you very much.
约翰·科克伦，非常感谢你。
Thank you.
谢谢。