Michael Kremer on Economists as Founders (Ep. 107)

Nobody thinks it’s strange that people who are in computer science go on to found firms, or that people who are researchers in biology go on sometimes to found firms.

没有人认为计算机科学领域的人继续创办公司，或者生物学研究人员有时继续创办公司是奇怪的。

Obviously, there are plenty of people in computer science or in biology who aren’t interested in that, but people don’t think it’s strange that there’s some people in those fields who do.

显然，计算机科学或生物学领域有很多人对此不感兴趣，但人们并不认为这些领域有些人对此感兴趣，这并不奇怪。

We’re now getting to a time in economics where I don’t think I’m unique in this.

我们现在正处于经济学的一个时代，我认为我在这方面并不是独一无二的。

Many economics researchers — researchers in development economics, in particular — have gone on to found organizations, and those have had real impact.

许多经济学研究人员——尤其是发展经济学研究人员——继续创立了组织，这些组织产生了真正的影响。

I don’t think this is exclusively tied to development economics since the experimental method, but I could explain a little bit more about why I think the experimental method and contemporary development economics research does have a natural affinity for that.

我不认为这与实验方法以来的发展经济学完全相关，但我可以更多地解释为什么我认为实验方法和当代发展经济学研究确实对此有天然的亲和力。

Now, you’re one of the most productive people.

现在，您是最有生产力的人之一。

You might think, according to O-ring theory, maybe you should found with Abhijit and Esther, but not with anyone else.

您可能会想，根据 O 形环理论，也许您应该与 Abhijit 和 Esther 一起找到，但不应该与其他任何人一起。

There’s not a certain comparative advantage in that model.

该模型不存在一定的比较优势。

How do you think about the economics of you as founder?

作为创始人，您如何看待您的经济状况？

How should I model that?

我应该如何建模？

That’s something that requires we use tools from experimental economics.

这需要我们使用实验经济学的工具。

We do A/B tests.

我们进行 A/B 测试。

We use ideas from behavioral economics.

我们使用行为经济学的思想。

So it’s using a lot of tools from economics, but it also takes a bunch of many other skills to found things and to operate an organization.

因此，它使用了很多经济学工具，但也需要许多其他技能来发现事物和运营组织。

I don’t think it’s a matter of those other people being less skilled.

我不认为这是其他人技能较差的问题。

It’s a matter of people being skilled in different areas.

这是人们在不同领域拥有技能的问题。

That was one organization.

那是一个组织。

More recently, I guess a lot of people who found NGOs or found organizations sometimes go on to be funders or go from being founders of for-profit tech firms to being VCs.

最近，我猜想很多创建非政府组织或组织的人有时会继续成为资助者，或者从营利性科技公司的创始人变成风险投资家。

One organization I’ve been involved in for 10 years now is Development Innovation Ventures, which is part of the US Agency for International Development.

我已经参与了 10 年的一个组织是 Development Innovation Ventures，它是美国国际开发署的一部分。

What Development Innovation Ventures does is, it helps invest in innovations for development.

发展创新风险投资公司的作用是帮助投资创新以促进发展。

Sometimes those are nonprofit organizations; sometimes they’re for-profits.

有时这些是非营利组织；有时是非营利组织。有时他们是为了营利。

Sometimes they’re started by development economics researchers; sometimes they’re started by others.

有时它们是由发展经济学研究人员发起的；有时是由发展经济学研究人员发起的。有时它们是由其他人发起的。

One of the reasons why I was saying I don’t think this is something unique to me, is that when we’ve looked at our track record, we see a really strong record of success, and a lot of that is development economics researchers.

我之所以说我不认为这对我来说是独一无二的，原因之一是，当我们审视我们的往绩记录时，我们看到了非常强大的成功记录，其中很多都是发展经济学研究人员。

On advance market commitments

关于预先的市场承诺

I liked the idea academically, but it didn’t really go anywhere politically.

我在学术上喜欢这个想法，但在政治上并没有真正取得任何进展。

I was thinking very much about pharmaceuticals.

我对药品思考了很多。

This is speculation, but I think the pharmaceutical firms — they’re obviously very attached to the current system of intellectual property.

这是猜测，但我认为制药公司 ——他们显然非常重视当前的知识产权体系。

They may have felt that if they sold their patents and put them in the public domain, that would weaken the legitimacy of that system, where it was just very different than what they were used to, whereas the idea of selling their products wasn’t so much.

他们可能觉得，如果他们出售专利并将其置于公共领域，就会削弱该系统的合法性，因为它与他们习惯的系统有很大不同，而销售其产品的想法并没有那么大。

You can avoid some of the distortions of monopoly.

你可以避免一些垄断的扭曲。

One of the key distortions of monopoly is that when the price is high, when there’s monopoly pricing, less of this gets sold.

垄断的主要扭曲之一是，当价格很高时，当存在垄断定价时，销售的产品就会减少。

When less of this gets sold, that’s harmful for many products, but in the case of pharmaceuticals, that can be very harmful to human health.

当销售量减少时，这对许多产品有害，但就药品而言，这可能对人类健康非常有害。

So the approach was, commit in advance to buy the efficient quantity for some products, in particular vaccines.

因此，方法是提前承诺购买某些产品的有效数量，特别是疫苗。

It’s fairly easy to know roughly what the efficient quantity is in advance.

提前大致了解有效数量是相当容易的。

Commit to buy that in advance, and then that can both create an incentive for vaccine development and the efficient quantity to be purchased.

承诺提前购买，这样既可以刺激疫苗开发，又可以提高购买的有效数量。

In the case of many childhood vaccines, the efficient quantity is enough to vaccinate pretty much the entire birth cohort, obviously.

显然，对于许多儿童疫苗来说，有效数量足以为几乎整个出生群体进行疫苗接种。

In practice, you can’t reach quite everybody.

实际上，你不可能接触到所有人。

That idea did turn out to be politically acceptable, and a number of countries, together with the Gates Foundation, pledged $1.5 billion to finance the purchase of a vaccine against a disease called pneumococcus.

事实证明，这一想法在政治上是可以接受的，许多国家与盖茨基金会一起承诺提供 15 亿美元资金购买针对肺炎球菌疾病的疫苗。

In particular, there was already a vaccine for the strains of pneumococcus that were common in the developed world.

特别是，已经有针对发达国家常见肺炎球菌菌株的疫苗。

But no firm had yet developed a vaccine against the strains of pneumococcus that are common in the developing world.

但尚未有公司开发出针对发展中国家常见肺炎球菌菌株的疫苗。

So they pledged that if firms did develop that, they would purchase it or they would help finance the purchase.

因此，他们承诺，如果公司确实开发了该产品，他们将购买它，或者为购买提供资金。

That led to three different pneumococcus vaccines that have now been developed against the strains that are common in the developing world.

这导致了三种不同的肺炎球菌疫苗的诞生，这些疫苗现已针对发展中国家常见的菌株而开发出来。

Hundreds of millions of people have been vaccinated, and 700,000 lives are estimated to have been saved by those pneumococcus vaccines.

数亿人已接种疫苗，估计这些肺炎球菌疫苗挽救了 70 万人的生命。

I think that’s a tremendous example of a success.

我认为这是一个巨大的成功例子。

Often, when we think about founding, we think about founding organizations.

通常，当我们想到创办时，我们会想到创办组织。

That wasn’t the case of founding an organization, but it was a case where a lot of issues had to be thought through — the economics issues, but many other issues as well.

这不是建立一个组织的情况，而是需要考虑很多问题的情况——经济问题，还有许多其他问题。

I don’t want to say the policy took off after that.

我不想说该政策在那之后就开始实施了。

The policy was adopted in the case of pneumococcus, and then there’s been additional work to try to use this in other settings as well, and a few other examples.

该政策是在肺炎球菌的情况下采用的，然后还进行了额外的工作来尝试在其他情况下使用该政策，以及其他一些例子。

You think about the opposite case — let’s say the Post-it Note.

你想想相反的情况 ——比如说便利贴。

We didn’t know we needed the Post-it Note until it was developed.

在便利贴开发出来之前，我们并不知道我们需要它。

So it’s very hard to have an advance market commitment or prize or something like that to incentivize the development of innovations that we never knew we needed till they were invented.

因此，很难预先做出市场承诺或奖励或类似的东西来激励创新的发展，而我们在发明它们之前从未知道我们需要这些创新。

I personally think it would be worth seeing if we could explore patent buyouts as well.

我个人认为，如果我们也可以探索专利收购，那就值得一看。

That’s a different tool for encouraging innovation that’s worth considering.

这是一个值得考虑的鼓励创新的不同工具。

It’s hard for outside parties to game the system very much, but if you do it over decades, there’s Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex and the big mess that you get with high costs, a lot of overruns.

外部各方很难对这个系统进行太多的博弈，但如果你这样做了几十年，就会出现艾森豪威尔的军工联合体，以及高成本和大量超支带来的大混乱。

Is that AMC?

是AMC吗？

Or is that somehow people not heeding your work?

或者是人们不注意你的工作？

You need a continual cycle of testing, adapting, coming up with a new version, et cetera.

你需要一个持续的测试、适应、推出新版本等等的循环。

There are a lot of details on how you implement the advance market commitment.

关于如何实施预先市场承诺有很多细节。

I don’t want to claim that the pneumococcus advance market commitment got everything right.

我不想声称肺炎球菌提前市场承诺一切都是正确的。

It probably could be improved over time.

随着时间的推移，它可能会得到改善。

Hopefully, they’ll be learning on both sides of the table.

希望他们能在桌子两边都学习。

On this issue of the political economy, without going to the military example, let me say one thing that I am concerned about with the advance market commitments, which is, I think there’s a tendency .

在政治经济这个问题上，在不谈军事例子的情况下，让我说一件事，我对预先市场承诺感到担忧，那就是，我认为有一种趋势。

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When Rachel Glennerster and I wrote a book on advance market commitments, proposing the idea, we focused on malaria.

当雷切尔·格伦纳斯特和我写了一本关于预先市场承诺的书并提出这个想法时，我们关注的是疟疾。

I was involved in co-chairing a working group at the Center for Global Development.

我曾担任全球发展中心一个工作组的联合主席。

That working group recommended both a technologically distant target like malaria and a technologically closer target, pneumococcus.

该工作组推荐了技术上较远的目标（如疟疾）和技术上较近的目标（肺炎球菌）。

What the political system went with was that technologically closer target, pneumococcus.

政治制度所伴随的是技术上更接近的目标——肺炎球菌。

I think that partly is due to political economy reasons.

我认为这部分是由于政治经济原因。

The politicians want a quick win.

政客们希望快速获胜。

The bureaucrats want a quick win, and their firms or other entities that are going to be pushing the things that they think they’ve got a technological advantage on — they’re technologically close.

官僚们希望快速获胜，他们的公司或其他实体将推动他们认为拥有技术优势的事物——他们在技术上已经接近。

I think that is an issue.

我认为这是一个问题。

Personally, in terms of the economics, it would make sense to really try a technologically distant product.

就我个人而言，就经济学而言，真正尝试技术上遥远的产品是有意义的。

There are some advantages of advance market commitments for technologically distant products.

对于技术上遥远的产品预先做出市场承诺有一些优势。

That’s the political economy issue that I would say is — I don’t want to claim it’s the only one — but that’s the one that’s most prominent for me.

我想说的政治经济学问题是 —— 我不想声称这是唯一的问题 —— 但这对我来说是最突出的问题。

A lot of people in developing countries cook with a small fire in their house, and that creates incredible indoor air pollution.

发展中国家的许多人在家里用小火做饭，这造成了令人难以置信的室内空气污染。

That’s estimated to kill millions of people a year.

据估计，这每年会导致数百万人死亡。

It also produces not just carbon emissions, but some chemicals that are actually much worse for global warming than that per unit volume.

它还不仅产生碳排放，还产生一些化学物质，这些化学物质实际上对全球变暖的影响比单位体积的排放要严重得多。

There have been efforts to develop cleaner stoves.

人们一直在努力开发更清洁的炉灶。

Now, those haven’t gone that far, in part because they haven’t found something that consumers want to use.

现在，这些还没有走那么远，部分原因是他们还没有找到消费者想要使用的东西。

That’s actually a great case for an advance market commitment because part of the idea of an advance market commitment is, you have to meet certain technological thresholds, but you also need to get customers willing to put up something.

这实际上是预先市场承诺的一个很好的例子，因为预先市场承诺的部分想法是，你必须满足某些技术门槛，但你也需要让客户愿意提供一些东西。

We could say that if somebody produced a cleaner stove and if consumers were willing to pay $10 for it, then there could be an additional $20 or $30 worth of subsidy, for example.

例如，我们可以说，如果有人生产了一种更清洁的炉灶，并且消费者愿意支付 10 美元购买它，那么可能会额外获得价值 20 美元或 30 美元的补贴。

Details would have to be thought out, but that would be another example.

细节必须考虑清楚，但那是另一个例子。

Sure, we could have things to reduce recidivism rates.

当然，我们可以采取一些措施来降低累犯率。

We could have programs to address educational challenges.

我们可以制定解决教育挑战的计划。

There’s a whole host of areas in high-income countries or in the United States where there are technological challenges that, for whatever reason, are not attracting quite the level of effort that tech companies are putting into other fields, and if we want more innovation, we could promise to reward them.

高收入国家或美国的许多领域都存在技术挑战，无论出于何种原因，这些挑战并没有吸引科技公司在其他领域投入的大量努力，如果我们想要更多创新，我们可以承诺奖励他们。

Does it plague all venture capital firms for biomedical ideas, or just the big stuff because it’s a liquidity issue?

它是否困扰着所有生物医学创意风险投资公司，或者只是因为流动性问题而困扰着大公司？

So for vaccines, we need advance market commitment, but for ordinary investments, venture capital will work just fine?

所以对于疫苗来说，我们需要预先的市场承诺，但是对于普通的投资，风险投资就可以了吗？

What’s your view?

你的看法是什么？

If we thought about individuals buying vaccines on their own — when I take a vaccine that would benefit you if you were closer or nearby, but indirectly, it even benefits you.

如果我们考虑个人自己购买疫苗 ——当我服用一种疫苗时，如果你离我较近或在附近，它会对你有益，但它甚至会间接使你受益。

Because I don’t infect somebody, they don’t infect somebody, and eventually, they don’t infect you.

因为我不会感染某人，他们也不会感染某人，最终，他们也不会感染你。

If we think about something like malaria, for example, there are many different governments involved, for example, many small African countries.

例如，如果我们考虑像疟疾这样的问题，就会涉及许多不同的政府，例如许多非洲小国。

No one of those countries has an incentive to say, “Well, let’s pay a price that would generate the socially appropriate incentives for developing a malaria vaccine.” So there’s a global public-good problem there in addition to everything else.

这些国家中没有一个国家有动力说：“好吧，让我们付出一定的代价，为开发疟疾疫苗带来适合社会的激励。”因此，除了其他问题之外，还存在一个全球公共利益问题。

There’s quite a few distortions in vaccine markets.

疫苗市场存在不少扭曲现象。

In general, however, we don’t think that innovators capture that much of the value.

然而，总的来说，我们认为创新者并没有获得那么多价值。

It’s a fairly small fraction.

这是相当小的一部分。

People who’ve estimated the social rate of return to private investment and R&D often estimate numbers like 70 percent.

估算私人投资和研发社会回报率的人通常会估算 70% 左右的数字。

I don’t think it’s limited to vaccines — that might be an extreme case.

我不认为这仅限于疫苗——这可能是一个极端的例子。

But I would actually be in favor of trying to boost R&D incentives in a wide variety of fields, not just some of the ones that we’ve mentioned so far.

但我实际上赞成尝试提高各个领域的研发激励措施，而不仅仅是我们迄今为止提到的一些领域。

Following the early results, we presented the results of the government of Kenya to the World Bank.

根据早期结果，我们向世界银行提交了肯尼亚政府的结果。

Kenya scaled this up nationally, in part with assistance from the World Bank, primarily just in conveying some of that information.

肯尼亚在全国范围内扩大了这一规模，部分是在世界银行的帮助下，主要是为了传达其中一些信息。

Indian states started doing that, and then the national government of India took this on.

印度各州开始这样做，然后印度中央政府采取了这一行动。

They’re reaching — a little bit harder to know the exact numbers — but probably 150 million people a year.

他们正在接触到————要知道确切的数字有点困难————但每年可能有 1.5 亿人。

Many other countries are doing this as well, so it’s actually quite widely adopted.

许多其他国家也在这样做，所以它实际上被广泛采用。

There’s also something about worms — they gradually build up in your body, and one worm is not going to do that much damage.

还有一些关于蠕虫的事情 ——它们会在你的体内逐渐生长，而且一只蠕虫不会造成那么大的伤害。

The problem is when you’ve got lots of worms in your body, and even there, it’s going to take time.

问题是，当你体内有很多蠕虫时，即使在那里，也需要时间。

I’ve had malaria.

我得过疟疾。

I don’t think I’ve had worms.

我不认为我有蠕虫。

I hope I haven’t.

我希望我没有。

When you have malaria, you feel terrible.

当你患有疟疾时，你会感觉很糟糕。

You go from feeling fine to feeling terrible, and then you take the medicine.

你从感觉良好变成感觉糟糕，然后你服药。

You feel great afterwards.

之后你感觉很棒。

With worms, it’s much more like a chronic thing, and when you expel the worms from your body, that’s sort of gross.

对于蠕虫来说，它更像是一种慢性疾病，当你将蠕虫从体内排出时，这有点恶心。

I don’t think, even at the individual level, do you have quite the demand that would be commensurate with the scale of the problem.

我认为，即使在个人层面上，你的需求也与问题的规模相称。

That’s a behavioral economics explanation.

这是行为经济学的解释。

I think there are political issues and then there are behavioral issues.

我认为有政治问题，然后还有行为问题。

I would actually say that a huge, huge issue .

我实际上想说这是一个非常非常大的问题。

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This sounds very boring, but this falls between the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education, and each one of them has different priorities.

这听起来很无聊，但这属于卫生部和教育部之间的事情，而且每个部门都有不同的优先事项。

The Ministry of Health is going to be worried about delivering things through clinics.

卫生部将会担心通过诊所运送物品。

They’re worried about HIV and malaria, tuberculosis, as it should be.

他们应该担心艾滋病毒、疟疾、结核病。

The Ministry of Education — they’re worried about teacher strikes.

教育部——他们担心教师罢工。

It’s very easy for something to either fall between the cracks or be the victim of turf wars.

有些东西很容易陷入困境或成为地盘争夺战的受害者。

It sounds too small to be, “How can that really get in the way?” But anybody who’s spent time working in governments understands those things can very easily get in the way.

这听起来太小了，“这怎么能真正妨碍呢？”但任何在政府工作过的人都知道这些事情很容易成为障碍。

In some ways, it’s surprising how much progress has been made.

在某些方面，取得的进展令人惊讶。

Here’s one way the political economy works in favor.

这是政治经济学有利的一种方式。

You mentioned democracy — I think that’s a factor.

你提到民主 —— 我认为这是一个因素。

I actually find — and I don’t want to be necessarily a big fan of politicians — but in some ways, politicians hear how much this costs, and they think they can affect that many people for that small amount of money, and they’re like, “Hey, I want to get on that.

我实际上发现 ——我不一定想成为政客的忠实粉丝 ——但在某些方面，政客们听到了这要花多少钱，他们认为他们可以用那么少的钱影响那么多人，他们会说，“嘿，我想参与其中。

Maybe this is something I can claim as an achievement.” We saw that in Kenya.

也许这就是我可以称之为成就的事情。”我们在肯尼亚看到了这一点。

We saw that in India.

我们在印度看到了这一点。

On economic growth

关于经济增长

I think we’ve got a set of institutions, primarily intellectual property institutions, but also research-funding institutions.

我认为我们有一系列机构，主要是知识产权机构，但也有研究资助机构。

We should be experimenting and try new approaches to this and try to improve things over time.

我们应该对此进行试验和尝试新方法，并尝试随着时间的推移进行改进。

I would say that would be one key message about economic growth.

我想说，这将是有关经济增长的一个关键信息。

Another paper that I’m working on recently with Jack Willis and Yang You — it looks at something that .

我最近与 Jack Willis 和 Yang You 合作撰写的另一篇论文——它探讨了一些东西。

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When I was in graduate school in the ’90s, I studied economic growth.

九十年代我在读研究生时，研究的是经济增长。

Robert Barro was my adviser.

罗伯特·巴罗是我的顾问。

One of the things I learned is that there’s not unconditional convergence.

我学到的一件事是，不存在无条件的收敛。

Some models predict poor countries would catch up to rich countries, and maybe they do if you take countries that have similar policies or similar human capital, but overall poor countries don’t catch up.

一些模型预测贫穷国家将赶上富裕国家，如果你考虑拥有相似政策或相似人力资本的国家，也许它们会追上富裕国家，但总体而言贫穷国家不会赶上。

I was teaching my development economics class a few years ago and thought, “Well, I better update my slides.” We looked at that again, and that’s totally changed.

几年前，我在教授发展经济学课程时想，“好吧，我最好更新一下我的幻灯片。”我们又看了一遍，情况完全改变了。

Actually, after the ’90s, this pattern changed.

事实上，进入90年代后，这种模式发生了变化。

Now, poor countries are catching up to rich countries.

现在，贫穷国家正在追赶富裕国家。

This isn’t just a matter of India and China.

这不仅仅是印度和中国的问题。

This is a broad-based phenomenon.

这是一个广泛的现象。

That’s something that I think is very exciting and very encouraging in a world where, within certain countries, there’s been increases in inequality.

我认为，在某些国家内部不平等现象加剧的世界中，这是非常令人兴奋和令人鼓舞的。

If you look at a global level, there’s also been this tremendous lifting of people out of poverty, and that’s very exciting.

如果你放眼全球，就会发现人们已经摆脱了贫困，这是非常令人兴奋的。

Does this in some way invalidate or raise doubts about increasing-returns-to-scale theories, that maybe market size doesn’t matter very much?

这是否在某种程度上使规模收益递增理论失效或引起怀疑，即市场规模也许并不那么重要？

But on the other hand, it’s not clear that it helps you, that an improvement in existing technology helps you, one for one, in developing new technologies.

但另一方面，目前尚不清楚它是否对您有帮助，现有技术的改进是否可以一对一地帮助您开发新技术。

In some sense, it’s getting harder and harder to invent new technologies.

从某种意义上说，发明新技术变得越来越难。

Chad’s work at the time showed that, and more recent work that Chad has done.

查德当时的工作以及查德最近所做的工作都表明了这一点。

In that world, the task of technological advance is getting harder and harder over time.

在那个世界里，随着时间的推移，技术进步的任务变得越来越艰巨。

We see that at the macro level.

我们在宏观层面上看到了这一点。

We see that at the micro level.

我们在微观层面上看到了这一点。

We see that in the increasing size of teams needed to develop new innovations.

我们看到开发新创新所需的团队规模不断扩大。

The task ahead of us is getting harder, and that means that there’s a race between the total resources that are going into innovation and the increasing difficulty of the task.

我们面前的任务越来越艰巨，这意味着用于创新的总资源与任务难度的增加之间存在着竞争。

You have those two forces operating against each other.

这两种力量相互对抗。

I’ve no doubt that the increasing size of the market and the fact that there are now many people who are contributing to technological change is helping us, but the issue is, we’ve got a harder and harder task ahead of us.

我毫不怀疑，市场规模的不断扩大以及现在有很多人为技术变革做出贡献这一事实正在帮助我们，但问题是，我们面临着越来越艰巨的任务。

It could be that when we get AI working well enough, we actually get to an incredibly virtuous cycle, and then we head off to a singularity where the AI gets smarter and smarter over time.

当我们让人工智能运行得足够好时，我们实际上会进入一个令人难以置信的良性循环，然后我们就会走向一个奇点，随着时间的推移，人工智能会变得越来越聪明。

We don’t know whether that’s a fundamental constraint, but whether that’s a constraint or not, there’s not much we can do about it.

我们不知道这是否是一个基本的限制，但无论这是否是一个限制，我们对此无能为力。

What we can do is, we can think about the myriad institutions.

我们能做的是，我们可以思考无数的机构。

We talked about IT institutions.

我们谈论了IT机构。

There’s also research-funding questions.

还有研究经费问题。

Should we be funding research the way we do?

我们应该像现在这样资助研究吗？

Or should we be saying, “Look, it’s not a matter of writing the grant proposal.

或者我们应该说，“看，这不是写拨款提案的问题。

Once you’re five years past the PhD, we’re going to fund you based on what you’ve accomplished, not based on your grant proposal.”

一旦你获得博士学位五年，我们将根据你所取得的成就来为你提供资助，而不是根据你的资助提案。”

That’s one example.

这就是一个例子。

I have no idea what the answer is to that.

我不知道答案是什么。

Should the committees be a different size than they are now?

委员会的规模是否应该与现在不同？

Should we say that we’re going to fund something as long as somebody really likes it rather than take the average of the committee view when we’re thinking about government grants?

当我们考虑政府拨款时，我们是否应该说，只要有人真正喜欢某件事，我们就会资助它，而不是采取委员会的平均观点？

There’s a bunch of questions about what the optimal way to do research funding is, and I think we should be experimenting with this, trying to learn more about how do we set up institutions.

关于研究资助的最佳方式是什么，存在很多问题，我认为我们应该对此进行试验，尝试更多地了解我们如何建立机构。

There’s questions about research publication process.

关于研究发表过程存在问题。

That’s the thing that we can control, and that should be a priority for anybody who cares about economic growth.

这是我们可以控制的事情，对于任何关心经济增长的人来说，这应该是优先考虑的事情。

However, kids are facing all sorts of disadvantages, and there are all sorts of problems in the way the system works.

然而，孩子们面临着各种各样的不利条件，系统的运作方式也存在着各种各样的问题。

There’s often high teacher absence.

教师缺勤率经常很高。

Kids are sick.

孩子们生病了。

Kids don’t have the preparation at home, often.

孩子们经常在家中无法做好准备。

So kids can fall behind the curriculum.

所以孩子们可能会落后于课程。

Whereas we’ve had the slogan in the US, “No Child Left Behind,” in developing countries, education system is focused on kids at the top of the distribution.

美国的口号是“不让一个孩子掉队”，而在发展中国家，教育体系的重点是处于分布顶端的孩子。

What’s been found is, if you can set up — and there are a whole variety of different ways to do this — either remedial education systems or some technology-aided systems that are adaptive, that go to where the kid is .

我们发现，如果你可以建立 — 并且有多种不同的方法可以做到这一点 — 无论是补习教育系统还是一些自适应的技术辅助系统，都可以到达孩子所在的地方。

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I’ve seen huge gains from this in India, and we’re starting to see adoption of this in Africa as well, and that can have a very big impact at quite low cost.

我在印度看到了这一技术的巨大收益，我们也开始看到非洲也采用了这一技术，这可以以相当低的成本产生非常大的影响。

Another thing is — I think it’s called structured pedagogy, which is just providing very detailed lesson plans for teachers.

还有一点是 —— 我认为这叫做结构化教学法，它只是为教师提供非常详细的教案。

That can be done in a variety of ways.

这可以通过多种方式来完成。

We’re seeing big effects from that as well.

我们也看到了巨大的影响。

The good news here — as in a lot of development — is, if we try a variety of things, and if we think about it using theory and using the tools of economics and tools of other disciplines, we can really make progress.

这里的好消息是，如果我们尝试各种各样的事情，如果我们使用理论并使用经济学工具和其他学科的工具来思考它，我们就能真正取得进步。

But I’ll tell you one thing that I am reasonably excited about.

但我会告诉你一件让我相当兴奋的事情。

I’ve done some work with Rebecca Thornton, Willa Friedman, and Ted Miguel on scholarships, where a lot of developing countries — you have to pay something, at least to go to secondary school if not primary school.

我和丽贝卡·桑顿 (Rebecca Thornton)、威拉·弗里德曼 (Willa Friedman) 和特德·米格尔 (Ted Miguel) 一起做了一些关于奖学金的工作，在很多发展中国家，你必须支付一些费用，至少要上中学，如果不是小学的话。

Even primary school — it’s officially free, but there are often fees.

即使是小学——官方也是免费的，但经常收费。

There is a program in Kenya that said if kids did well at sixth grade, their fees would be covered for seventh and eighth grade.

肯尼亚有一个计划称，如果孩子们在六年级表现良好，他们的七年级和八年级费用将得到补偿。

These were in poor schools, so you know this was going to poor kids.

这些都是在贫穷的学校里，所以你知道这是给贫穷的孩子们的。

What we saw was, obviously, there’s a direct benefit of allowing more kids to go on to the higher grades of school.

显然，我们看到的是，让更多的孩子进入更高年级的学校有直接的好处。

But we also saw that kids were putting in more effort in response to this, and not just the kids at the top of the distribution, but throughout the distribution.

但我们也看到孩子们为此付出了更多的努力，不仅仅是分布顶部的孩子，而是整个分布的孩子。

It also looked like teachers were putting in more effort, as well, because they were motivated to try and help their students do better.

看起来老师们也付出了更多的努力，因为他们有动力去尝试帮助学生做得更好。

So I think having some sort of merit scholarship program is something .

所以我认为拥有某种优秀奖学金计划是很重要的。

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There are some flaws in our paper.

我们的论文存在一些缺陷。

I don’t know whether we should scale up.

我不知道我们是否应该扩大规模。

Maybe we should, because saying that kids who do well in school can go on to the next level of education doesn’t seem that controversial, so maybe we should scale it up.

也许我们应该这样做，因为说在学校表现好的孩子可以继续接受更高层次的教育似乎并没有那么有争议，所以也许我们应该扩大规模。

I don’t want to claim the evidence is totally dependent upon it.

我不想声称证据完全依赖于它。

We could test this more, learn about how to make it work, but this is the type of program that also deserves .

我们可以对此进行更多测试，了解如何使其发挥作用，但这也是值得的程序类型。

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Probably, it should be part of a system and certainly deserves more testing.

也许，它应该是系统的一部分，当然值得更多测试。

This does not seem to be a problem in most developing-country education systems I know, but certainly, the US can have a system where it’s not cool to do well in school, can have a culture like that — or not cool to do too well in school.

在我所知道的大多数发展中国家的教育体系中，这似乎不是问题，但可以肯定的是，美国可以有一个在学校表现出色并不酷的体系，可以有这样的文化——或者在学校表现太好也不酷。

I don’t see that in Kenya, and I don’t hear about that in India.

我在肯尼亚没有看到这种情况，在印度也没有听说过这种情况。

Thinking about how can we set up a system of incentives and rewards to try to address that is a really interesting question.

思考我们如何建立一个激励和奖励体系来尝试解决这个问题，这是一个非常有趣的问题。

Despite saying this isn’t even a problem in Kenya, two students, Ronna Jane and Brandon Tan, have some, I think, very preliminary .

尽管说这在肯尼亚甚至不是问题，但我认为，两名学生，罗娜·简（Ronna Jane）和布兰登·谭（Brandon Tan），有一些非常初步的想法。

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More work needs to be done on this, but they have some very exciting results for Kenya.

这方面还需要做更多的工作，但他们为肯尼亚取得了一些非常令人兴奋的成果。

You were talking about paying kids to do well as individuals.

你说的是付钱给孩子，让他们成为一个优秀的人。

They’ve been trying something at that level in the classroom as a whole, where they reward the classroom as a whole for doing well.

他们一直在整个课堂上尝试这种水平的东西，他们会奖励整个课堂表现出色的人。

You can imagine that can possibly create a culture in the class as a whole, where you want each other to do well.

你可以想象，这可能会在整个班级中创造一种你希望彼此表现出色的文化。

The initial results on this are actually extremely promising.

初步结果实际上非常有希望。

The coast of Kenya — it’s not just the beaches.

肯尼亚海岸——不仅仅是海滩。

It’s the Swahili culture that’s a very interesting blend of cultures there.

斯瓦希里文化是那里非常有趣的文化融合。

But game parks have to be very high on the agenda for people.

但游戏公园必须成为人们议程上的重要议题。

Nairobi right now is a cosmopolitan, exciting city.

现在的内罗毕是一个国际化的、令人兴奋的城市。

It’s a happening place.

这是一个充满活力的地方。

I didn’t feel that way about it in the late ’80s or early ’90s, but now it’s a very exciting place to be.

在 80 年代末或 90 年代初我对此没有这种感觉，但现在这是一个非常令人兴奋的地方。

If you’re talking about where you can get good food, you can get good food of a lot of different types in Nairobi.

如果您谈论的是在哪里可以找到美食，那么在内罗毕您可以找到许多不同类型的美食。

I was talking about convergence recently.

我最近在谈论融合。

Things are really improving in a lot of the world, and it can be very easy to forget that in the time of COVID, a time of all the other problems that we’re having right now.

世界上很多地方的情况确实在改善，但在新冠疫情时期，我们很容易忘记这一点，这是我们现在遇到的所有其他问题的时期。

People are freer, and people are living more exciting, more open, less constrained lives.

人们更加自由，人们的生活更加令人兴奋、更加开放、更少束缚。

There’s something in Dubliners about the perspectives people have on situations.

《都柏林人》中有一些关于人们对情况的看法。

They’re remarkably local, and they’re keen, and they’re perceptive, and they’re highly emotional, but the arc at which people make comparisons, typically, is a very small circle.

他们非常本地化，他们很敏锐，他们有洞察力，他们非常情绪化，但人们进行比较的范围通常是一个非常小的圈子。

Ireland, when it joins the EU and even before then — it’s changing that, I think.

爱尔兰，当它加入欧盟时，甚至在那之前，我认为它正在改变这一点。

I think Weber himself, obviously, may be wrong, but very sophisticated, not simplistic.

我认为韦伯本人显然可能是错的，但他非常复杂，而不是简单化。

But there was a lot of simplistic analysis of “Confucian societies will never grow.” Or “Hindu rate of growth is inherently low.” So people were making, clearly, statements that were just wrong.

但有很多“儒家社会永远不会发展”的简单化分析。或者“印度教的增长率本来就很低。”因此，人们显然做出了错误的陈述。

It turned out to be wrong.

事实证明这是错误的。

Even before the head economist said, “Look, we don’t need to” .

甚至在首席经济学家说“看，我们不需要”之前。

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the founding of modern development economics would say that the people are poor but rational.

现代发展经济学的创立会说，人民是贫穷的，但也是理性的。

We can use the same tools of economics to analyze people in low-income countries as high-income countries.

我们可以使用与高收入国家相同的经济学工具来分析低收入国家的人民。

I think there’s a lot to be said for that.

我认为对此有很多话要说。

But what we’ve realized with behavioral economics is that people in high-income countries are not completely rational either, and there are certain patterns in the way that they’re not rational.

但我们通过行为经济学认识到，高收入国家的人们也不是完全理性的，而且他们不理性的方式存在一定的模式。

Those things can play out differently in low-income countries and high-income countries just due to different institutions.

由于制度不同，这些事情在低收入国家和高收入国家的表现可能有所不同。

But what you’re suggesting is something much stronger than that — that there can be certain ways of thinking embodied in culture.

但你的建议比这更强烈——文化中可以体现某些特定的思维方式。

Those are interesting ideas, and people like Nathan Nunn or Alberto Alesina are doing very exciting work on culture and economics.

这些都是有趣的想法，像内森·纳恩（Nathan Nunn）或阿尔贝托·阿莱西纳（Alberto Alesina）这样的人正在文化和经济方面做着非常令人兴奋的工作。

We have a lot more to learn about how far we can take that, but I think there’s exciting work going on in that area.

关于我们能走多远，我们还有很多东西需要了解，但我认为该领域正在进行令人兴奋的工作。

We have to be careful and avoid some of the simplistic approaches of the past.

我们必须小心并避免过去的一些简单化方法。

I also think — just to come back to this point about convergence — one of the things a lot of the work on economic history, and on culture in particular, has emphasized is just how long-lasting things are.

我还认为，“回到关于趋同的问题”，许多关于经济史，特别是文化史的著作所强调的事情之一就是事物的持久性。

Whether societies used to plow thousands of years ago affects society today.

几千年前的社会是否耕作会影响今天的社会。

That’s the claim.

这就是主张。

I’m very open to those ideas, but what we’ve also seen is low-income countries really catching up — and remarkably quickly — to higher-income countries.

我对这些想法持开放态度，但我们也看到低收入国家确实正在追赶——而且速度非常快——追赶高收入国家。

That suggests that we shouldn’t take talking about culture as indicating that there’s no possibility for development or for change.

这表明我们不应该将谈论文化视为表明没有发展或变革的可能性。

There’s clearly that possibility.

显然存在这种可能性。

We’ve seen that in country after country.

我们在一个又一个国家都看到了这一点。

And they, right now, in COVID, are doing things.

现在，在新冠疫情期间，他们正在做一些事情。

They’re risking their lives to help people get through the COVID crisis.

他们冒着生命危险帮助人们度过新冠危机。

I work on international development.

我从事国际发展工作。

That’s at least in part because I feel like this is something — at actually fairly low cost to ourselves — we can help address these problems.

这至少部分是因为我觉得这 ——“对我们自己来说实际上成本相当低”—— 我们可以帮助解决这些问题。

The case of deworming — this is something that costs 50 cents a year to address.

驱虫的案例——每年需要花费 50 美分才能解决。

I guess those values did influence me.

我想这些价值观确实影响了我。

You talked about experience as a founder, and I’ve talked about technological change and the need for changes in technology, by which I mean gadgets, but I don’t just mean gadgets.

你谈到了作为创始人的经历，我谈到了技术变革和技术变革的需求，我指的是小工具，但我不仅仅指小工具。

I mean institutional change, innovation, and policies as well.

我指的是制度变革、创新和政策。

I think what we’ve seen is, there’s a lot of potential to generate that.

我认为我们所看到的是，有很大的潜力来实现这一点。

University of Chicago made a big commitment to development economics in general.

芝加哥大学总体上对发展经济学做出了重大承诺。

I hope we’ll be hiring more people over time, and certainly the slots will be there for that, and to create a development innovation lab, which will use the tools of economics to create practical innovations that can improve people’s lives, and to work closely with partners to develop and refine and iterate on those innovations so that they can be scaled up.

我希望随着时间的推移，我们将雇用更多的人，而且肯定会有这样的空缺，并创建一个发展创新实验室，该实验室将利用经济学工具来创造能够改善人们生活的实用创新，并与合作伙伴密切合作，开发、完善和迭代这些创新，以便扩大规模。

What I’ve been seeing in my own research, what’s true with a lot of research of J-PAL Poverty Action Lab at MIT, and what I’ve seen in the USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures is, when you invest in that type of technology — anytime you’re investing in innovation, most innovations don’t succeed.

我在自己的研究、麻省理工学院 J-PAL 贫困行动实验室的大量研究以及美国国际开发署的发展创新企业中看到的事实是，当你投资于此类技术时 ——任何时候你投资于创新时，大多数创新都不会成功。

They don’t take off, but you get a few.

它们不会起飞，但你会得到一些。

If you’re a venture capitalist and you invest in a Google or Facebook, it’s fine if a lot of your other investments don’t work.

如果你是一名风险投资家，并且投资了谷歌或 Facebook，那么即使你的许多其他投资不起作用也没关系。

I think the same thing in investing in development and innovation.

我认为投资发展和创新也是如此。

When we did an analysis of the rate of return, we tried to get a lower bound on the rate of return for the early investments at Development Innovation Ventures at USAID, and we’re getting a 5:1 lower bound.

当我们对回报率进行分析时，我们试图得出美国国际开发署发展创新风险投资公司早期投资回报率的下限，我们得到了 5:1 的下限。

It’s a super conservative lower bound.

这是一个超级保守的下限。

I think we’ll have a much higher rate in our next iteration of this.

我认为我们在下一次迭代中会有更高的速率。

Just to be clear what a lower bound this is, we had 41 innovations in our early portfolio.

为了明确这个下限，我们的早期产品组合中有 41 项创新。

We couldn’t quantify the benefits for all of them, but of the 9 or 10 that reached over a million users, we could quantify the benefits for 4.

我们无法量化所有这些的好处，但在用户数量超过 100 万的 9 或 10 个中，我们可以量化 4 个的好处。

If you take the benefits of those 4 and set them against the cost of our investments in all 41, the ratio is 5:1.

如果您将这 4 项的收益与我们在所有 41 项中的投资成本进行比较，则比率为 5:1。

And I think that that will grow over time.

我认为这种情况会随着时间的推移而增长。

I just think there’s a huge, huge reward to invest in innovation.

我只是认为投资创新会带来巨大的回报。

There’s also a scientific reward.

还有科学奖励。

University of Chicago’s making a big commitment in that area, and that’s a big part of why I came here.

芝加哥大学在该领域做出了重大承诺，这也是我来到这里的一个重要原因。

Part of the reason why I originally got into doing experiments was to isolate causal impact, to disentangle “Is it a particular program that’s causing something, or particular intervention?

我最初进行实验的部分原因是为了隔离因果影响，以理清“是某个特定程序导致了某些事情，还是特定的干预？

Or is it something else?” Experiments are very good for that, but when you’re doing experiments, you’re typically working on a concrete problem because that’s what organizations do.

还是有别的事？”实验对此非常有用，但是当你进行实验时，你通常是在解决一个具体的问题，因为这就是组织所做的。

They’re doing the experiment because they want to solve that problem.

他们做实验是因为他们想解决这个问题。

You have to get to know the people who work in that institution.

您必须了解在该机构工作的人。

You also have to get to know the ultimate customer.

您还必须了解最终客户。

One of the things that business books will tell you is, know your customer.

商业书籍会告诉你的一件事是，了解你的客户。

That means, yes, you want to learn the statistics on the customers, but you also want to talk to the customers.

这意味着，是的，您想要了解客户的统计数据，但您也想与客户交谈。

Development economists will typically — if it’s an education program they’re studying — they’ll talk to kids.

发展经济学家通常会“如果他们正在研究一个教育项目”，他们会与孩子们交谈。

They’ll talk to the teachers.

他们会和老师交谈。

They’ll talk to the school principals.

他们会与学校校长交谈。

You get in the habit of doing that, and that’s very useful for innovation more broadly.

你养成了这样做的习惯，这对于更广泛的创新非常有用。

Another thing is, as a researcher — and this would be true for any type of researcher — but you’re presenting your research in seminars, and you’re getting feedback on it.

另一件事是，作为一名研究人员 ——对于任何类型的研究人员来说都是如此—— 但是你在研讨会上展示你的研究，并且你会得到反馈。

You’re getting criticism on that, and you’re going back and revising things.

你会因此受到批评，然后你会回去修改一些东西。

I think that’s actually very useful for management.

我认为这对于管理来说实际上非常有用。

One of the problems that managers can have is, you can convince yourself — and this might be particularly true in development — you can convince yourself that what you’re doing is the right way to do things, the only way to do things, and you may not get feedback otherwise.

管理者可能遇到的问题之一是，你可以说服自己 ——在开发中尤其如此——你可以说服自己，你正在做的事情是正确的做事方式，是唯一的做事方式，否则你可能无法得到反馈。

In research you do, and that’s a great thing about academics.

在你所做的研究中，这对学术界来说是一件很棒的事情。

One thing about modern development economics and experimental economics is, it’s iterative.

现代发展经济学和实验经济学的一件事是，它是迭代的。

You try one thing.

你尝试一件事。

Then either the same researchers or other researchers try to improve on it again, and it’s a constant cycle.

然后，同样的研究人员或其他研究人员会再次尝试改进它，这是一个持续的循环。

That’s, again, something that your management books will tell you is very important.

再说一遍，你的管理书籍会告诉你这一点非常重要。

You also get used to working with people.

你也会习惯与人合作。

You have to raise money.

你必须筹集资金。

You have to work with NGOs or governments or firms to talk to them about randomizing.

你必须与非政府组织、政府或公司合作，与他们讨论随机化问题。

There’s a whole bunch of skills that actually are applicable beyond just writing a paper.

除了写论文之外，还有很多实际适用的技能。

If I think about GiveDirectly, an organization — it’s a very successful NGO, but founded by a development economist, Paul Niehaus.

如果我想到 GiveDirectly，这是一个非常成功的非政府组织，但由发展经济学家保罗·尼豪斯 (Paul Niehaus) 创立。

But there are many, many others who are doing things like this.

但还有很多很多其他人也在做这样的事情。

Again, in many other fields, this wouldn’t seem like a strange combination, being a researcher and also being a founder.

同样，在许多其他领域，既是研究员又是创始人，这似乎并不是一个奇怪的组合。

When we think about this problem, the problem of getting a COVID vaccine is different in some important ways.

当我们思考这个问题时，获得新冠疫苗的问题在一些重要方面有所不同。

That’s, again, something that economics and being close to research, in theory, will tell you.

从理论上讲，这又是经济学和接近研究会告诉你的事情。

Just to be clear — sometimes people have a stereotype of experimentation as opposed to theory.

需要明确的是，有时人们对实验有一种刻板印象，而不是理论。

I think they’re strongest when they’re linked.

我认为当他们联系在一起时他们是最强大的。

There’s a number of different things we’ve suggested, but one of them is — and this is very much with your colleague, Alex Tabarrok — very simply is, the world economy is losing $500 billion every month due to COVID, and that means that it’s worth investing a lot in trying to develop a COVID vaccine, even though there’s a pretty high risk of failure, and it’s also worth getting lots of shots on goal.

我们提出了很多不同的建议，但其中之一是 — 这对你的同事 Alex Tabarrok 来说非常重要 — 很简单，世界经济由于新冠病毒而每月损失 5000 亿美元，这意味着值得投入大量资金来尝试开发新冠病毒疫苗，尽管失败的风险相当高，而且也值得进行多次尝试。

Now, for a variety of reasons, which I could go into, the private returns from building out a very large factory for a vaccine before we know whether the vaccine is going to work — before testing is complete — are much less than the social returns.

现在，出于各种我可以讨论的原因，在我们知道疫苗是否有效之前——在测试完成之前——建造一个非常大的疫苗工厂，私人回报远低于社会回报。

In this particular case, it probably makes sense for governments to offer to cover — you probably want a mix of push incentives and pull incentives.

在这种特殊情况下，政府提供覆盖可能是有意义的——你可能需要推动激励和拉动激励的结合。

Some reward for success, but also just some up-front financing for building those factories ahead of time.

一些成功的奖励，但也只是一些提前建设这些工厂的前期融资。

That’s what we’ve been arguing for, and a bunch of countries are doing things like that — so, the US Operation Warp Speed — but many other countries are putting in orders for vaccine even ahead of the time the vaccine’s been proven to work.

这就是我们一直主张的，许多国家正在做类似的事情——比如美国的“曲速行动”——但许多其他国家甚至在疫苗被证明有效之前就已经订购了疫苗。

There’s obviously risk involved, but it’s very much a risk worth taking.

显然存在风险，但这是一个非常值得冒的风险。

There are other lessons that are coming out of the industrial organization of this, like it’s very important to invest in supply-chain capacity, not just in the production of the ultimate vaccine.

从这个行业组织中还得出了其他教训，比如投资供应链能力非常重要，而不仅仅是最终疫苗的生产。

We might want to consider ways to get some of the early information from the trials out, so we can use it even before the trial is finished.

我们可能想考虑如何从试验中获取一些早期信息，以便我们甚至可以在试验完成之前使用它。

We can use it to invest optimally in manufacturing.

我们可以利用它来优化制造业投资。

So a lot of insights from studying the economics of this, and that’s obviously a critically important problem.

通过研究经济学可以获得很多见解，这显然是一个至关重要的问题。

And policymakers seem .

政策制定者似乎。

.

。

.

。

Again, you could say it’s a glass half full or half empty.

同样，你可以说它是半满的或半空的。

I would say the glass is at least partially full.

我想说玻璃杯至少是部分满的。

I’d like policymakers to be investing more in this, but they are starting to invest, and they’re starting to do these contracts well in advance of availability of the vaccine.

我希望政策制定者在这方面投入更多，但他们已经开始投资，并且在疫苗上市之前就开始签订这些合同。