Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development (Ep. 101)
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Conversations with Tyler.
大家好，欢迎收看《与泰勒对话》。
Today I am chatting with Nathan Nunn, who is a famous economist, professor at Harvard.
今天我和内森·纳恩聊天，他是著名经济学家、哈佛大学教授。
His work is wide ranging.
他的工作范围广泛。
I think of his main areas as economic development, history, and contract enforcement, but he’s worked on many additional issues.
我认为他的主要领域是经济发展、历史和合同执行，但他还致力于许多其他问题。
Nathan, welcome.
内森，欢迎。
Great.
伟大的。
Thanks for having me here, Tyler.
谢谢你邀请我来到这里，泰勒。
It’s great to be here.
很高兴来到这里。
On Africa
关于非洲
Let’s start with some Africa questions.
让我们从一些非洲问题开始。
Why does it seem that Ethiopia is suddenly so successful in nation building?
为什么埃塞俄比亚在国家建设方面似乎突然如此成功？
That’s a good question.
这是一个好问题。
I haven’t studied Ethiopia, but the standard answer would be a history of state formation.
我没有研究过埃塞俄比亚，但标准答案是国家形成的历史。
There was Axum and great kingdoms; it was the one country or area that wasn’t colonized, so that would be a standard answer.
有阿克苏姆和伟大的王国；这是一个没有被殖民的国家或地区，所以这将是一个标准答案。
I think that’s a pretty superficial answer.
我认为这是一个非常肤浅的答案。
I don’t think that we know intimately, or in great detail, why is it that a history of state formation or having successful states or empires is correlated with economic success in state formation today.
我认为我们并没有深入或详细地了解为什么国家形成的历史或拥有成功的国家或帝国与当今国家形成的经济成功相关。
But I think that would be the standard answer that your average Africanist or growth economist would give.
但我认为这将是普通非洲主义者或增长经济学家给出的标准答案。
I think there is some validity to that.
我认为这有一定道理。
But does this get at a broader question about persistence and the importance of persistence?
但这是否涉及到关于坚持和坚持的重要性的更广泛的问题？
If you look at Ethiopia in the 1970s, it’s a poster child for extreme poverty.
如果你看看 20 世纪 70 年代的埃塞俄比亚，你会发现它是极端贫困的典范。
If we look at Ethiopia in the time of the slave trade, Eastern Africa — as you point out in your work, a very large number of slaves were taken from Ethiopia, which is supposed to predict low trust and bad long-term outcomes.
如果我们看看奴隶贸易时期的埃塞俄比亚，东非 ——正如您在工作中指出的那样，大量奴隶被从埃塞俄比亚带走，这应该预示着信任度低和长期不良后果。
And now, they’re good at nation building because of events millennia ago.
现在，由于几千年前的事件，他们擅长国家建设。
Over what time horizon does persistence operate?
持久性在多长时间内发挥作用？
Or is it always supposed to be moving in the same direction?
或者它总是应该朝同一个方向移动？
Or is there also some kind of mean reversion?
或者是否也存在某种均值回归？
That’s a great point.
这是一个很好的观点。
When you think about persistence, one thing that’s important is how much of the total variation does this factor in the past explain?
当你考虑持久性时，重要的一件事是这个因素在过去解释了多少总变化？
That is going to be relevant for the type of question that you ask.
这与您提出的问题类型相关。
If we see, in the periods of decades or even centuries, a lot of movement and correlations that are in opposite direction, that’s fine, and that’s completely consistent with persistence, as long as persistence isn’t explaining 99 percent of everything, or 97 percent.
如果我们看到，在几十年甚至几个世纪的时间里，有很多相反方向的运动和相关性，那很好，而且这与持久性完全一致，只要持久性不能解释一切的 99% 或 97%。
The way I think about it — and hopefully this is answering your question — we’re all pretty confident that smoking, in general, causes lung cancer, so that’s kind of a long-term factor.
我的想法是 — 希望这能回答你的问题 — 我们都非常有信心吸烟一般会导致肺癌，所以这是一个长期因素。
But you can definitely find counterexamples of that, and that’s individuals who maybe smoked but are healthy and lived a lot longer.
但你绝对可以找到反例，那就是那些可能吸烟但健康且寿命更长的人。
Or throughout your lifetime, you might have differences in levels of health.
或者在您的一生中，您的健康水平可能会有所不同。
At one point you could be healthier or less healthy.
在某一时刻，你可能会变得更健康，也可能不太健康。
Exactly similar argument with education.
与教育完全相同的论点。
We think, on average, more educated people have higher levels of income, but throughout a person’s life, there could be ups and downs, and the correlation could be different amongst subsamples.
我们认为，平均而言，受教育程度越高的人收入水平越高，但在一个人的一生中，可能会出现起伏，并且子样本之间的相关性可能有所不同。
I think that analogy, if you apply it to any country and any country’s experience, goes a long way to understanding why countries are moving often in opposite directions than what we would think.
我认为，如果你将这个类比应用到任何国家和任何国家的经验，就会有助于理解为什么各国经常朝着与我们想象相反的方向前进。
But if you look at a broad cross-section of countries, there is this nonzero correlation that we call persistence.
但如果你观察一下各个国家的广泛横截面，就会发现这种非零相关性，我们称之为持久性。
Let’s say you’re in a tournament with a hedge fund manager, and you’re both having to invest in emerging economies, and you understand persistence — you and Melissa Dell probably better than anyone in the world — and the hedge fund manager hasn’t mastered your work.
假设你和一位对冲基金经理一起参加一场锦标赛，你们都必须投资新兴经济体，并且你了解坚持 ——“你和梅丽莎·戴尔可能比世界上任何人都好”——而对冲基金经理还没有掌握你的工作。
So even if persistence is explaining, say, only 5 percent of the variation, which would be a modest claim, you should be able to beat that person, right?
因此，即使持久性只能解释 5% 的变异（这只是一个温和的说法），你也应该能够击败那个人，对吗？
Because you and Melissa understand persistence, and you will pick the winners, on average, somewhat better than the hedge fund manager.
因为你和梅丽莎都懂得坚持，而且你会选择平均而言比对冲基金经理更好的赢家。
Or no?
或者没有？
Well, it depends if there’s a market for .
好吧，这取决于是否有市场。
.
。
.
。
if there’s others in the world who are also as knowledgeable as us.
世界上是否还有其他人也像我们一样知识渊博。
But if we were the only two in the world, I would think, yeah, that’s right.
但如果我们是世界上仅有的两个人，我会想，是的，没错。
The one thing I would also point out, though, is it’s important to think about, is the persistence based on location or based on societies?
不过，我还要指出的一件事是，重要的是要考虑，持久性是基于位置还是基于社会？
There’s been a lot of movement of individuals.
个人流动很大。
Persistence based on societies basically is very strong, based on locations is not strong.
基于社会的持久性基本上很强，基于地点的持久性则不强。
That’s the one caveat — if Melissa and I were picking versus this other person — that one would want to take into account, is trace the people, not the places.
这是一个警告——“如果梅丽莎和我要与另一个人进行选择”——“人们要考虑的是追踪人，而不是地点。”
If you try to think, say, within Africa, what would be some places that you would be modestly more optimistic about than, say, a hedge fund manager who didn’t understand persistence?
如果你试着思考，比如说，在非洲，有哪些地方你会比一个不理解持久性的对冲基金经理更加乐观？
What would a few of those countries be?
其中一些国家会是什么？
Again, recognizing enormous noise, variance, and so on, as with smoking and lung cancer.
再次，认识到巨大的噪音、差异等，就像吸烟和肺癌一样。
If I’m true to exactly what I was just saying, then southern Africa or places where you have a larger population of societies that historically were more developed.
如果我刚才所说的完全正确，那么南部非洲或人口较多的地方的社会在历史上更加发达。
South Africa, you have the Afrikaans, and they have a different descent than others.
南非有南非荷兰语，他们的血统与其他国家不同。
That’s if I’m true to what I was saying.
如果我说的是真的的话。
But that’s ignoring that, also within Africa, you had a very large number of successful, well-developed states, and that was prior to European colonialism and the slave trade.
但这忽略了一点，在非洲内部，也有大量成功、发达的国家，而且那是在欧洲殖民主义和奴隶贸易之前的。
So one could look at those cases.
所以人们可以看看这些案例。
One area that I worked at, the Democratic Republic of Congo, where you had the great Congo Kingdom, the Kuba Kingdom, a large number of other kingdoms, the Luba for example — that would probably be one country.
我工作过的一个地区是刚果民主共和国，那里有伟大的刚果王国、库巴王国和许多其他王国，例如卢巴——那可能是一个国家。
That country today is pretty much as low as — in terms of per capita income — as you can be, right at subsistence.
如今，那个国家的水平几乎是最低的——“就人均收入而言”——只能勉强维持生计。
But if we’re predicting just based purely on persistence and historical state formation, that would be one to pick.
但如果我们纯粹基于持久性和历史状态形成进行预测，那么这将是一个值得选择的选择。
What do you find to be the most convincing account of Botswana’s relative economic success?
您认为对博茨瓦纳相对经济成功最有说服力的解释是什么？
A few things.
有几件事。
One is, Botswana is pretty small in terms of population.
一是，博茨瓦纳的人口很少。
Anytime you have smaller countries, you can have more extreme outcomes.
任何时候，只要国家较小，就可能会出现更极端的结果。
That’s one, that it’s small.
这就是其中之一，它很小。
But then related to that, it’s, in general, ethnically homogenous, particularly compared to other countries within Africa.
但与此相关的是，总的来说，它在种族上是同质的，特别是与非洲其他国家相比。
The Tswana are the predominant ethnicity.
茨瓦纳人是主要民族。
They also have a historical social structure, and I think that was pretty well maintained and left intact.
他们也有历史的社会结构，我认为它维护得很好并且完好无损。
That’s a big part of the explanation.
这是解释的很大一部分。
On the lingering effects of the slave trade in Africa
关于非洲奴隶贸易的挥之不去的影响
You’ve argued that in the context of a cross-country growth regression, the countries that had many slaves taken from them have done worse in the longer term than regions left more intact.
你认为，在跨国增长倒退的背景下，从长远来看，那些被夺走许多奴隶的国家比那些完好无损的地区表现得更差。
You think that same regularity holds true within individual countries rather than across countries, say within different parts of Nigeria?
您认为同样的规律适用于各个国家而不是国家之间，例如尼日利亚的不同地区？
Yeah, I think it does.
是的，我认为确实如此。
It’s not something that we ever published, but with Leonard Wantchekon, who’s a political scientist originally from Benin — basically, we looked at subnational measures of the number of individuals of each ethnicity that were taken from different parts of Africa.
这不是我们曾经发表过的东西，但与来自贝宁的政治学家伦纳德·旺切肯（Leonard Wantchekon）一起，基本上，我们研究了来自非洲不同地区的各个种族的人口数量的次国家衡量标准。
What we focused on there was actually not income, although you do have measures of income, and you could do that very easily.
我们关注的实际上不是收入，尽管你确实有收入衡量标准，而且你可以很容易地做到这一点。
But once I had established that, across countries, there is this relationship between income and slave exports, it’s less surprising, or maybe less publishable, that within countries you’d find the same thing.
但是，一旦我确定，在不同国家中，收入和奴隶出口之间存在这种关系，那么在国家内部你会发现同样的事情就不再令人惊讶，或者可能不太容易发表。
What we did look at, though, was distrust, and you find a strong relationship there.
不过，我们确实看到的是不信任，但你会发现那里存在着牢固的关系。
And obviously distrust — it’s not surprising that that’s going to be correlated with income as well.
显然，不信任——这也与收入相关，这并不奇怪。
If I think about West Africa for a minute, putting aside Eastern African slave trade, it seems to me the wealthiest areas, the places people actually want to live, are on the coast.
如果我考虑一下西非，抛开东非奴隶贸易，在我看来，最富裕的地区，人们真正想要居住的地方，都在沿海地区。
And the places that had the most slaves taken were on the coast, for more or less obvious reasons.
出于或多或少显而易见的原因，被掳奴隶最多的地方是沿海地区。
Doesn’t that mean that the raw correlation is a positive one between how well a region has done within a country?
这是否意味着一个地区在一个国家内的表现之间的原始相关性是正相关的？
I’d rather live in Lagos than in Kano within Nigeria, yet presumably more slaves were taken from the coast.
我宁愿住在拉各斯，也不愿住在尼日利亚的卡诺，但可能有更多的奴隶从海岸被带走。
Yeah, it could be.
是的，可能是。
This is a study someone should do, actually.
实际上，这是一项有人应该做的研究。
Jeffrey Sachs has been famous, or at least when I was in grad school had famously said things like, “Africans live in strange places.
杰弗里·萨克斯（Jeffrey Sachs）很出名，或者至少在我读研究生时曾说过这样的话：“非洲人生活在奇怪的地方。
They live away from rivers.
他们住的地方远离河流。
They tend to live away from the coast.
他们往往居住在远离海岸的地方。
They live in more mountainous regions which are less fertile.
他们生活在较为贫瘠的山区。
Why would that be?”
为什么会这样？
That’s true, exactly what you said.
确实如此，正是您所说的。
Although secretly you want to live next to rivers, you want to live in a fertile plain, you want to live next to the coast except for the slave trade.
虽然私下里你想住在河边，你想住在肥沃的平原，你想住在海岸旁边，除了奴隶贸易。
And so in the data I’ve looked at, your logic is exactly there.
所以在我看过的数据中，你的逻辑是完全存在的。
But then there’s the slave trade, so in places where there was a lot of slave trade, people are less likely to live close to the coast.
但还有奴隶贸易，所以在有大量奴隶贸易的地方，人们不太可能住在靠近海岸的地方。
And in particular, what I also looked at was, people are more likely to live in mountainous areas as well.
特别是，我还注意到，人们也更有可能生活在山区。
I think everything you said is exactly right, and that’s the omitted factor, is that, ironically, places which otherwise would have been the best places to live were also the places for which you were most exposed to the slave trade.
我认为你所说的一切都是完全正确的，而这就是被忽略的因素，具有讽刺意味的是，本来是最好居住地的地方也是你最容易遭受奴隶贸易的地方。
My guess, and from the data I’ve looked at, is you will see persistent patterns in where people live within Africa that is explained by those geographic features and the slave trade.
根据我查看的数据，我的猜测是，您会看到非洲人民居住地的持续模式，这可以通过这些地理特征和奴隶贸易来解释。
They moved away from the coast where there was a slave trade.
他们搬离了奴隶贸易的海岸。
They moved away from rivers.
他们搬离了河流。
They moved to mountains for protection.
他们搬到山里寻求庇护。
Some remarkably high percentage of individuals in sub-Saharan Africa live in Nigeria, which is not that large a country.
撒哈拉以南非洲地区有相当高比例的人居住在尼日利亚，而尼日利亚并不是一个很大的国家。
How did it work out that way?
怎么会变成这样呢？
Why did that happen?
为什么会发生这种事？
That’s long puzzled me.
这让我很困惑。
I think 25 percent of sub-Saharan Africa lives in Nigeria.
我认为 25% 的撒哈拉以南非洲人口居住在尼日利亚。
That’s a good question.
这是一个好问题。
I’d have to look at the geography, but it must be the fertility of the soils, the ability to produce.
我必须看看地理，但一定是土壤的肥力和生产能力。
And that’s exactly the stat that we just said, despite the fact that Nigeria, the Bight of Biafra, was one of the areas that had exported the most slaves.
这正是我们刚才所说的统计数据，尽管事实上尼日利亚比夫拉湾是出口奴隶最多的地区之一。
So the counterfactual of what the population would be must be even higher.
因此，人口数量的反事实必定更高。
I haven’t looked into the geography, but it must be fertility.
我没有研究过地理，但一定是生育力。
You have to be able to support that large number of individuals in terms of subsistence and eating.
你必须能够在生存和饮食方面支持这么多人。
This is even despite the fact that the northern part of Nigeria, we know, is much less fertile.
尽管我们知道，尼日利亚北部地区的肥沃程度要低得多，但情况仍然如此。
If you think about the effects of the slave trade on, say, West Africa, one measure is per capita income, but if you’re at something close to a Malthusian equilibrium, isn’t another measure of how well the places are doing just population?
如果你考虑奴隶贸易对西非的影响，一个衡量标准是人均收入，但如果你处于接近马尔萨斯均衡的状态，那么衡量这些地方的人口状况的另一种衡量标准不就是人口吗？
So to speak, the regions consume doing better in terms of higher population rather than higher per capita income.
可以说，这些地区的消费表现更好是因为人口较多，而不是人均收入较高。
It’s what you would expect in a Malthusian model, and you shouldn’t just look at income but look at where the people live.
这就是你在马尔萨斯模型中所期望的，你不应该只关注收入，而应该关注人们居住的地方。
And then you have Nigeria, which was a center for taking the enslaved from Africa and having this very large population, and that seems counterintuitive.
然后是尼日利亚，它是从非洲奴役的中心，拥有如此庞大的人口，这似乎违反直觉。
Yeah.
是的。
One would have to look at the data, definitely.
肯定要看看数据。
One question is, are there other factors like geography?
一个问题是，是否还有其他因素，例如地理位置？
And we just mentioned that.
我们刚刚提到过这一点。
And the one thing with the slave trades — I have to think about how this all works out — but in the research I’ve done, it’s very clear that there was endogenous selection into the slave trade, and you could even think of that as being strategic by Europeans or the slave merchants.
奴隶贸易的一件事是 —— 我必须考虑这一切是如何发生的 —— 但在我所做的研究中，很明显奴隶贸易存在内生选择，你甚至可以认为这是欧洲人或奴隶商人的战略。
It was those societies, those locations that had the most densely populated regions or that had well-functioning states already and well-developed states.
正是这些社会、那些地区拥有人口最稠密的地区，或者已经拥有运转良好的国家和发达的国家。
The intuition is, if you’re a slave raider or a slave merchant, it’s going to be much easier to accumulate slaves for export if there’s a lot of people around — slaves are people — than maybe where there’s low population density.
直觉是，如果你是一个奴隶掠夺者或奴隶商人，如果周围有很多人——“奴隶就是人”——那么积累奴隶用于出口将会比人口密度低的地方容易得多。
The way I think of it is, those densely populated places — those areas were the ones that were targeted by the slave trade.
我认为，那些人口稠密的地方 ——那些地区就是奴隶贸易的目标。
That’s kind of an omitted factor that you’ll want to take into account.
这是一个你需要考虑的被忽略的因素。
What’s going on with Nigeria, I would guess, is it has geographic factors, geographic conditions that made it very densely populated initially, so it was a target of slave exports.
我猜想，尼日利亚的情况是它有地理因素，地理条件使它最初人口非常稠密，所以它是奴隶出口的目标。
And that had negative effects on income and also population density because we’re in a Malthusian world.
这对收入和人口密度产生了负面影响，因为我们处于马尔萨斯世界。
But that omitted factor is enough to drive Nigeria’s current large levels of population.
但这个被忽略的因素足以推动尼日利亚目前的大量人口。
In other words, there’s geography, which causes larger population initially, causes more slaves to be taken, and that means, also, larger population today.
换句话说，地理因素最初导致人口增加，导致更多的奴隶被俘虏，这也意味着今天的人口增加。
You would just have to take all those things into account.
您只需要考虑所有这些因素即可。
How do you think about Cape Verde in your framework?
您如何看待您的框架中的佛得角？
Originally, those islands were not settled.
最初，这些岛屿并没有人类定居。
They were a center for the slave trade.
他们是奴隶贸易的中心。
It wasn’t the case that slaves, per se, were taken from them.
奴隶本身并不是被从他们手中夺走的。
Today Cape Verde has a vibrant multiparty democracy, free speech.
今天，佛得角拥有充满活力的多党民主和言论自由。
Hardly a wealthy place, but institutionally, it seems to be doing pretty well in terms of social and political capital.
虽然不是一个富裕的地方，但从制度上看，它在社会和政治资本方面似乎表现得相当不错。
What’s your hypothesis about Cape Verde?
您对佛得角有何假设？
This is one thing in the analysis I did that was hard to think about.
这是我所做的分析中很难思考的一件事。
There were places that were initially uninhabited or that didn’t supply slave exports.
有些地方最初无人居住或不提供奴隶出口。
Mauritius, Réunion would be another.
毛里求斯、留尼汪岛是另一个。
I think Cape Verde fits into this bucket.
我认为佛得角适合这个类别。
They imported slaves and didn’t export them, so they didn’t experience the detrimental effects to indigenous institutions, the breakdown of traditional social structures.
他们进口奴隶而不出口奴隶，因此他们没有经历对土著制度的有害影响和传统社会结构的崩溃。
They had established property rights.
他们建立了财产权。
They had a lot greater inequality.
他们的不平等程度更大。
I think of them as more similar to plantation islands in the Americas, for example.
例如，我认为它们更类似于美洲的种植园岛屿。
One interesting fact is, there’s another set of islands, Comoros, where they were initially inhabited, and that looks more like the rest of East Africa.
一个有趣的事实是，还有另一组岛屿，科摩罗，他们最初居住的地方，看起来更像东非其他地区。
Madagascar would be another example.
马达加斯加是另一个例子。
That’s how I think of it: they escaped all of the detrimental effects of the slave trade.
我就是这么想的：他们逃脱了奴隶贸易的所有有害影响。
So are you a Zanzibar optimist?
那么您是桑给巴尔的乐观主义者吗？
Zanzibar had an indigenous population as well.
桑给巴尔也有土著居民。
That’s a great point.
这是一个很好的观点。
Zanzibar would look like other small African countries that had slaves taken.
桑给巴尔看起来就像其他有奴隶的非洲小国一样。
And because they had indigenous populations and there was slave raiding, that was kind of an entrepôt, but I’d have to think about it.
因为他们有土著居民，并且存在奴隶袭击，所以那是一种转口港，但我必须考虑一下。
There was a lot of wealth, historically, because it was this trading entrepôt.
从历史上看，这里曾拥有大量财富，因为这里是贸易转口港。
If Zanzibar was its own country, maybe it would have much better functioning institutions than Tanzania.
如果桑给巴尔是自己的国家，也许它的机构运作会比坦桑尼亚好得多。
In the last 10 years, it’s become a fashionable view that East Africa, or parts of it, will lap West Africa because of their location; that there’s geopolitical competition; that China, India are all vying for influence in East Africa.
在过去的十年里，一种流行的观点认为，东非或其部分地区将因其地理位置而超越西非。存在地缘政治竞争；中国、印度都在争夺东非的影响力。
China will invest more in the infrastructure of, say, Ethiopia than it might in Nigeria, and because of strategic location, we should be relatively bullish on East Africa.
中国对埃塞俄比亚等国基础设施的投资将超过对尼日利亚的投资，而且由于战略位置，我们应该相对看好东非。
What’s your view?
你的看法是什么？
Hmm, I don’t have a strong view.
嗯，我没有很强的观点。
I haven’t thought about that.
我还没想过。
But if we’re thinking about historical persistence, and going back to your suggestion, then it is true that Eastern Africa, for example, as part of the Omani Empire — there was more trade for long periods of time with the Middle East, for example, across the Indian Ocean.
但如果我们考虑历史的持久性，并回到你的建议，那么确实，东非，例如，作为阿曼帝国的一部分，在很长一段时间内与中东有更多的贸易，例如跨越印度洋。
From that perspective, maybe Eastern Africa does have a leg up.
从这个角度来看，也许东非确实有优势。
But I really haven’t thought about this at all.
但我真的完全没有想过这个问题。
I think part of this is — and I think there’s research being done on this — is what are the effects on development of Chinese aid, of Chinese joint ventures, of greater integration with the East?
我认为部分原因是——我认为有人正在对此进行研究——中国的援助、中国的合资企业以及与东方更大程度的融合对发展有何影响？
I think part of your story, or that narrative, rests on the assumption that greater integration with China is going to be relatively beneficial, which is very plausible.
我认为你的故事或叙述的一部分基于这样的假设：与中国的更大程度的融合将相对有利，这是非常合理的。
When it comes to your relative optimism for the southern parts of Africa, how much do you worry about what we call the gravity equation in trade theory?
当谈到您对非洲南部地区的相对乐观态度时，您对我们所说的贸易理论中的引力方程有多担心？
They’re just too far from most other places.
他们离大多数其他地方太远了。
Most other countries don’t care strategically very much about them.
大多数其他国家在战略上不太关心它们。
Perhaps apart from a few minerals, they won’t have nearly as much trade.
也许除了一些矿产之外，它们的贸易量不会那么大。
South Africa in particular has been deindustrializing.
尤其是南非一直在去工业化。
What’s their engine of growth, given their trade possibilities seem to be more limited?
鉴于他们的贸易可能性似乎更加有限，他们的增长引擎是什么？
Is the gravity equation pretty powerful predictively, yes?
重力方程的预测能力很强吗？
Yeah, the gravity equation is very, very powerful.
是的，重力方程非常非常强大。
One thing to keep in mind is, with the gravity equation, there are traditional variables that are in there, which are distance.
要记住的一件事是，对于重力方程，其中有传统变量，即距离。
But then there’s been a lot of work actually extending this and putting other bilateral variables in there as well — for example, common language, common religion.
但实际上已经有很多工作扩展了这一点，并将其他双边变量也放入其中 ——例如，共同语言、共同宗教。
If we think of South Africa, obviously, having common language with European countries is going to be important.
如果我们想到南非，显然，与欧洲国家拥有共同语言将非常重要。
English, for example, and then common religion.
例如英语，然后是共同宗教。
The most controversial is the work by Spolaore and Wacziarg where genetic distance is a super strong predictor of basically bilateral income differences and trade.
最具争议性的是 Spolaore 和 Wacziarg 的工作，其中遗传距离基本上是双边收入差异和贸易的超强预测因子。
And so again, these former settler colonies — South Africa, for example — are going to have a leg up in the gravity equation for exactly that reason if one buys the genetic distance story.
再说一次，如果有人相信遗传距离的说法，这些前殖民者殖民地——例如南非——将在重力方程中占据一席之地。
And so it is —
原来如此 ——
What’s your view of that story?
你对这个故事有什么看法？
It’s a strong empirical regularity, for sure, that absolute distance genetically between societies explains the absolute difference in income.
当然，这是一个很强的经验规律，社会之间基因上的绝对距离解释了收入的绝对差异。
You see that very, very strongly.
你非常非常强烈地看到这一点。
I think this doesn’t tell us anything about the importance of genes for per capita, GDP, or for economic success.
我认为这并没有告诉我们基因对于人均、GDP 或经济成功的重要性。
If two societies are very similar genetically — what it means is, they’ve had a very similar history.
如果两个社会在基因上非常相似——那就意味着它们有着非常相似的历史。
The time since their last common ancestors split is not going to be very distant, so they would have experienced a lot of common shocks, would have lived in common geographies, would have had similar forces that affected cultural evolution, societal evolution.
距离他们最后一次共同祖先分裂的时间不会很远，所以他们会经历很多共同的冲击，会生活在共同的地理位置，会有类似的力量影响文化进化、社会进化。
I think that’s what that’s picking up, basically, is the importance of history and how that affects culture institutions.
我认为这基本上就是历史的重要性以及它如何影响文化机构。
They really don’t know in that paper what is this vertically transmitted trait.
他们在那篇论文中确实不知道这种垂直传播的特征是什么。
It could be genetics, but they don’t push that.
这可能是遗传因素，但他们并没有推动这一点。
I think it’s all these bundles of things that are affected by history.
我认为所有这些事情都受到历史的影响。
Why does distance from the equator seem to predict GDP per capita so well?
为什么距赤道的距离似乎可以很好地预测人均GDP？
It’s not obvious it should matter at all, right?
这并不明显，它应该很重要，对吧？
Yep, that’s right.
是的，没错。
There’s a time, I think when I was in grad school, this was one of the great questions that the profession was trying to deal with.
我想，当我在读研究生时，有一段时间，这是这个行业试图解决的重大问题之一。
There’s a lot of explanations.
有很多解释。
One is pure geography.
一是纯地理。
Malaria is bad, for example.
例如，疟疾就很糟糕。
Sleeping sickness is bad.
昏睡病很糟糕。
And those are more prevalent closer to the equator — that would be the Jeffrey Sachs view.
而这些在靠近赤道的地方更为普遍——这就是杰弗里·萨克斯的观点。
The other one is, while history is important and those places — for the Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson view — those places had less settlement of Europeans.
另一个问题是，虽然历史很重要，而且那些地方——根据阿西莫格鲁、约翰逊和罗宾逊的观点——那些地方欧洲人定居的较少。
An extractive strategy was employed rather than a strategy where you build local institutions and try to improve the society.
采用的是榨取战略，而不是建立地方机构并努力改善社会的战略。
Personally, I think there seems to be more evidence for the historical view, although I don’t know that that one story explains everything.
就我个人而言，我认为历史观点似乎有更多证据，尽管我不知道这个故事可以解释一切。
I think there’s a lot of other reasons why historical geography would have been important.
我认为历史地理学的重要性还有很多其他原因。
What can Africa do to overcome the limitations of having so many landlocked countries?
非洲可以做些什么来克服拥有如此多内陆国家的限制？
That’s a good question.
这是一个好问题。
The obvious thing would be a transportation network that’s improved beyond what they currently have, particularly railways, so that landlocked countries can transport their goods to the sea.
显而易见的是，交通网络将比目前的交通网络得到改善，特别是铁路，以便内陆国家可以将货物运输到海上。
And we know that sea transport is much, much cheaper, much more effective.
我们知道海运要便宜得多、效率要高得多。
So that would be —
那么那就是 ——
Even then, the final country seems to capture a lot of the rents.
即便如此，最终的国家似乎还是获得了大量租金。
India takes rents from Nepal through transportation networks.
印度通过交通网络从尼泊尔收取租金。
Djibouti captures a lot of rents from Ethiopia because the actual relevant port to Ethiopia is in Djibouti.
吉布提从埃塞俄比亚获得了大量租金，因为与埃塞俄比亚实际相关的港口就在吉布提。
That’s interesting.
那很有意思。
It depends on the number of your outside options, actually.
实际上，这取决于您的外部选择的数量。
You can think of a country like Niger, Burkina Faso — there are a few different countries which they could go through to get to the coast.
你可以想象像尼日尔、布基纳法索这样的国家——他们可以经过几个不同的国家才能到达海岸。
If you had multiple lines or dense railway network, then there are going to be outside options, and they can capture more of the rents.
如果你有多条线路或密集的铁路网络，那么就会有外部选择，他们可以获取更多的租金。
But that point is valid.
但这一点是正确的。
That might not be enough.
这可能还不够。
And related to this is, if you also developed a network infrastructure or transportation infrastructure that connected different countries within Africa better.
与此相关的是，如果你还开发了网络基础设施或交通基础设施，可以更好地连接非洲内部的不同国家。
If you look at the network right now, what you see is the railway network which exists, which was primarily established during the colonial period, is basically meant to get resources from wherever in Africa to the coast and then shipped to Europe.
如果你现在看一下网络，你看到的是现有的铁路网络，主要是在殖民时期建立的，基本上是为了将资源从非洲任何地方运到沿海，然后运到欧洲。
It’s not well established to allow African societies to trade with one another, so that would arguably also be beneficial.
允许非洲社会相互贸易的规定还不够完善，因此这可以说也是有益的。
And this is related to who gets the rents because then you would have more outside options, more choices for each country, particularly these landlocked countries.
这与谁获得租金有关，因为这样你就会有更多的外部选择，每个国家都有更多的选择，特别是这些内陆国家。
What should, say, West Africa do to overcome the harmful historical effects of the slave trade, say on trust?
例如，西非应该采取什么措施来克服奴隶贸易对信任的有害历史影响？
That’s a good question.
这是一个好问题。
That’s the big development question.
这是一个大的发展问题。
What should any developing country do to try and develop?
发展中国家应该做什么来尝试和发展？
I think one thing —
我认为一件事 ——
But that problem in particular — you must have some implicit theory.
但这个问题尤其重要——你必须有一些隐含的理论。
That’s how trust levels are transmitted across generations, right?
这就是信任水平代代相传的方式，对吗？
Yeah.
是的。
And then from the micro elements of that theory, you’ll have at least potential remedies at the margin, but what are they for you?
然后从该理论的微观要素来看，你至少会在边缘找到潜在的补救措施，但它们对你来说有什么用呢？
I think one is — although I don’t have a strong understanding of the psychology of this — if you look at the data, trust tends to be increasing the levels of education of an individual.
我认为一个是 ——尽管我对其中的心理学没有深入的理解 ——如果你看一下数据，信任往往会提高个人的教育水平。
That would be one policy recommendation: we can increase education levels.
这将是一项政策建议：我们可以提高教育水平。
For low levels of income, trust is increasing in income.
对于低收入水平，信任随着收入的增加而增加。
It’s kind of hump shaped.
它有点驼峰形状。
But then that’s this chicken-and-egg problem: Well, how do we generate economic development that then results in greater levels of trust?
但这就是先有鸡还是先有蛋的问题：那么，我们如何实现经济发展，从而带来更高水平的信任？
When you have economic development, you’re going to have more interactions between individuals.
当经济发展时，人与人之间就会有更多的互动。
You’re going to have more successful interactions, positive-sum interactions.
你将会有更成功的互动，正和互动。
People will learn that they can trust one another, and I think that that’s going to be part of the benefit.
人们将了解到他们可以相互信任，我认为这将是好处的一部分。
But I think it’s really related to, how do you spur economic growth so that lots of activities are positive sum rather than just zero sum, so that we have growth and an increasing share of the pie?
但我认为这确实与如何刺激经济增长有关，使许多活动都是正和而不是零和，从而使我们实现增长并增加份额？
And then we can cooperate and realize there are benefits to cooperation and that lead to higher levels of trust.
然后我们就可以合作，并认识到合作是有好处的，并且可以带来更高水平的信任。
Why do you think many parts of the New World — and I have in mind Latin America — have relatively high levels of crime for their per capita income?
您认为为什么新世界的许多地区（我指的是拉丁美洲）的人均收入犯罪率相对较高？
Latin America also, as you know, has pretty high levels of education for its per capita income.
如您所知，拉丁美洲的人均教育水平也相当高。
There may be trust at some micro levels, but crime rates in the New World are much higher than anywhere else.
在某些微观层面上可能存在信任，但新世界的犯罪率比其他任何地方都高得多。
Crime rates in Latin America very often are higher than in most parts of Africa.
拉丁美洲的犯罪率往往高于非洲大部分地区。
What has gone wrong there in terms of the intergenerational transmission of trust?
信任的代际传递出了什么问题？
And of course, it’s multi-ethnic, but so is much of Africa.
当然，它是多民族的，但非洲大部分地区也是如此。
That’s a good question.
这是一个好问题。
I haven’t thought about that.
我还没想过。
And also, I obviously know less about Latin America.
而且，我显然对拉丁美洲了解较少。
One is, I’m not sure that it’s related to trust.
一是，我不确定这是否与信任有关。
I think it’s related to whatever tools and mechanisms a society can employ to constrain activities which we call crime.
我认为这与社会可以用来限制我们所谓的犯罪活动的任何工具和机制有关。
I can tell you more about what happens in sub-Saharan Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where I spend much of my time.
我可以告诉你更多关于撒哈拉以南非洲和刚果民主共和国发生的事情，我在那里度过了大部分时间。
There, you wouldn’t think that the formal institutions are better than in Brazil, for example.
例如，你不会认为那里的正式制度比巴西更好。
The police force is less well functioning, but the crime rates — we were very surprised when we first went to the areas where we stay — are extremely, extremely low.
警察部队的运作不太好，但犯罪率——“当我们第一次去我们居住的地区时，我们感到非常惊讶”——非常非常低。
So what is it?
那么它是什么？
It’s not through formal mechanisms, but it’s through informal mechanisms such that you could almost think of it as mob justice, that if one person commits a crime, there’s going to be informal actions taken to punish that individual.
它不是通过正式机制，而是通过非正式机制，你几乎可以将其视为暴民正义，如果一个人犯罪，就会采取非正式行动来惩罚该人。
That relies on the strength of indigenous, informal institutions or social structures that prevent that.
这依赖于阻止这种情况发生的本土、非正式机构或社会结构的力量。
In Latin America, it seems like the reliance are on these more modern, formal institutions which aren’t as good as other countries.
在拉丁美洲，似乎对这些更现代、更正式的机构的依赖并不像其他国家那么好。
The other thing about Latin America — I would say there’s extreme inequality.
关于拉丁美洲的另一件事 —— 我想说那里存在着极端的不平等。
We see this in national Gini coefficients.
我们在国家基尼系数中看到了这一点。
That’s different than countries where you’re very close to subsistence, and the scope for inequality is much less.
这与那些非常接近温饱的国家不同，而且不平等的范围要小得多。
I would just guess that that has a big part to do with it as well.
我只是猜测这也有很大的关系。
But those are all just conjectures.
但这些都只是猜测。
Is it fun to visit Democratic Republic of Congo?
去刚果民主共和国好玩吗？
Yeah, it’s great.
是的，太棒了。
Yeah.
是的。
Tell us what’s fun.
告诉我们有什么好玩的。
I need to go once I can.
一旦可以，我就得走一趟。
Yeah, it’s really, really great.
是的，这真的非常棒。
The first time we went as a team — this is James Robinson, Sara Lowes, Jonathan Weigel in 2013 — we were pretty apprehensive.
我们第一次作为一个团队去 ——这是 2013 年的詹姆斯·罗宾逊 (James Robinson)、萨拉·洛斯 (Sara Lowes)、乔纳森·韦格尔 (Jonathan Weigel)—— 我们非常担心。
You hear a lot of stories about the DRC.
你听说过很多关于刚果民主共和国的故事。
It sounds like a very unsafe place, et cetera.
这听起来像是一个非常不安全的地方，等等。
But one thing we didn’t realize or weren’t expecting was just how lovely and wonderful the people are.
但我们没有意识到或没有预料到的一件事是，这里的人们是多么可爱和美好。
And it turns out it’s not unsafe in general.
事实证明，总的来说，这并不是不安全的。
It depends on different locations.
这取决于不同的地点。
In the east, definitely near Goma, it’s obviously much, much less safe.
在东部，尤其是戈马附近，显然安全性要差得多。
But I think what, for me, is wonderful is the sense of community.
但我认为对我来说，最美妙的是社区意识。
Because the places we go are places that haven’t been touched, to a large extent, by foreign aid or NGOs or tourism, I think we are treated just like any other individual within the community.
因为我们去的地方在很大程度上没有受到外国援助、非政府组织或旅游业的影响，所以我认为我们受到的待遇就像社区中的任何其他人一样。
Because the places we go are places that haven’t been touched, to a large extent, by foreign aid or NGOs or tourism, I think we are treated just like any other individual within the community.
因为我们去的地方在很大程度上没有受到外国援助、非政府组织或旅游业的影响，所以我认为我们受到的待遇就像社区中的任何其他人一样。
In the psychology literature, it’s often referred to as collectivist versus individualist culture.
在心理学文献中，它通常被称为集体主义文化与个人主义文化。
I think it’s just a culture where the individual is less important.
我认为这只是一种个人不太重要的文化。
You’re more embedded in the community, their social relations, and I think that’s nice.
你更加融入社区，融入他们的社会关系，我认为这很好。
It’s nice to experience that — coming from a Western society — for a month every year.
每年有一个月的时间来体验“来自西方社会”真是太好了。
What’s another favorite place of yours to visit in Africa?
您在非洲最喜欢参观的另一个地方是哪里？
That’s a good question.
这是一个好问题。
You mentioned Zanzibar.
你提到了桑给巴尔。
I’ve done archival research in Zanzibar.
我在桑给巴尔做过档案研究。
They’ve great archives there, which are funded by UNESCO.
他们在那里拥有大量由联合国教科文组织资助的档案。
And you can do great things like swim with dolphins and turtles, and there’s the old Stone Town there as well.
您还可以做一些很棒的事情，比如与海豚和海龟一起游泳，那里还有古老的石头城。
So that’s another great place.
所以这是另一个好地方。
South Africa is also great.
南非也很棒。
Cape Town and Stellenbosch — that’s a very posh part of Africa that’s very, very pleasant.
开普敦和斯泰伦博斯——这是非洲非常豪华的地方，非常非常宜人。
Actually, what I really enjoy is just going back to the different parts of the DRC, kind of on a regular basis.
事实上，我真正喜欢的是定期回到刚果民主共和国的不同地区。
Given that you develop bonds with different people, that’s really nice to see them, see how they’re doing over time, and that sort of thing.
鉴于你与不同的人建立了联系，很高兴见到他们，看看他们随着时间的推移表现如何，诸如此类。
There’s a recent online piece by Morgan Kelly.
摩根·凯利 (Morgan Kelly) 最近在网上发表了一篇文章。
I’m sure you know it.
我相信你知道。
It’s called “The Standard Errors of Persistence,” and it’s pretty technical.
它被称为“持久性的标准错误”，而且非常技术性。
Feel free to give us an answer that no one will understand, but he says, “Many persistence regressions can strongly predict spatial noise.” What do you think of this piece?
请随意给我们一个没人能理解的答案，但他说，“许多持久性回归可以强有力地预测空间噪声。”你觉得这件作品怎么样？
I think it has an important lesson, which is, we have to really be careful when we’re thinking about societies, or people, or anything really — institutions, policies.
我认为它有一个重要的教训，那就是，当我们思考社会、人或任何真正的“机构、政策”时，我们必须非常小心。
Because in the cross-section especially .
因为在横截面中尤其如此。
.
。
.
。
well, actually, not only cross-section but in the time series, there’s a lot of correlation across observations.
嗯，实际上，不仅是横截面，而且在时间序列中，观察结果之间也存在很多相关性。
If you looked at, for example, the eastern DRC, those groups, those individuals there are going to have a lot of similar experiences as just across the border in Rwanda, and they’re going to be culturally somewhat similar.
例如，如果你看看刚果民主共和国东部，那里的那些群体、那些个人将会有很多与边境另一边的卢旺达相似的经历，而且他们在文化上也会有些相似。
The further you move away, the more independent they are, but the closer spatially you are, the more correlated they are.
距离越远，它们就越独立，但在空间上距离越近，它们就越相关。
So if we’re looking at any correlations and there are these omitted factors, then if you’re close to one another, your error terms are going to be more similar.
因此，如果我们正在研究任何相关性并且存在这些被遗漏的因素，那么如果你们彼此接近，你们的误差项将会更加相似。
That’s basically an important point of that paper.
这基本上是该论文的一个重要观点。
If you don’t take that into account — and it’s hard because there’s a lot we don’t know — if you don’t take that into account, you can get a lot of false positives.
如果你不考虑这一点，那就很难了，因为有很多我们不知道的事情，如果你不考虑这一点，你可能会得到很多误报。
And part of that comes from overestimating the effective number of observations that you have.
部分原因是高估了您所拥有的有效观察数量。
On the importance of the Catholic Church
论天主教会的重要性
Your colleague, Joe Henrich, has a new book coming out about WEIRD, based on his earlier articles — the notion that there is a quite unique Western cultural perspective based on the particular notion of rationality and instrumental reasoning, also belief in democracy, particular religious views, even if they’re held in a secular manner.
你的同事乔·亨里奇（Joe Henrich）出版了一本关于《怪异》的新书，该书基于他之前的文章，即认为存在一种非常独特的西方文化观点，这种观点基于特定的理性和工具推理概念，以及对民主的信仰和特定的宗教观点，即使它们是以世俗的方式持有的。
And as I read him, he views that as, really, the driving force behind Western development.
当我读到他的文章时，他认为这确实是西方发展背后的驱动力。
Do you agree?
你同意？
Yeah.
是的。
I think we don’t know the exact details for exactly why, but I think there is something about WEIRD societies that led to the rise of Western Europe, definitely.
我认为我们不知道具体原因，但我认为奇怪的社会肯定有某种原因导致了西欧的崛起。
I think that’s the original — or not the original because you can always go further back in time — but that was an important impetus, was why did Europe diverge from the rest of the world?
我认为这就是最初的 ——或者不是最初的，因为你总是可以追溯到更早的时间 —— 但这是一个重要的推动力，为什么欧洲会与世界其他地区分道扬镳？
He talks about the breakdown of clans, which I think is important, and the breakdown of the extended family unit, the Church disallowing polygamy, the Church disallowing cousin marriage.
他谈到了宗族的崩溃，我认为这很重要，以及大家庭单位的崩溃，教会不允许一夫多妻制，教会不允许表亲婚姻。
All these things helped to maintain these lineage structures.
所有这些都有助于维持这些血统结构。
That led to individuals being important.
这导致个人变得重要。
And that really is the definition of individualistic culture versus collectivist culture.
这确实是个人主义文化与集体主义文化的定义。
I think the one other thing that’s important is, Joel Mokyr talks about, in his recent book, is that we learned that it was — and this is probably related to individualism and the program of the Catholic Church — we learned it was okay to break from tradition and to question the previous generation.
我认为另一件重要的事情是，乔尔·莫基尔在他最近的书中谈到，我们了解到它是 ——这可能与个人主义和天主教会的计划有关—— 我们了解到打破传统并质疑上一代人是可以的。
Once you do that, you can deviate from the traditional structures.
一旦你这样做了，你就可以偏离传统的结构。
You can have the Scientific Revolution.
你可以进行科学革命。
You can have a lot of innovation, and I think that was also important.
你可以有很多创新，我认为这也很重要。
That’s important for the Industrial Revolution, for example, and that’s something he makes a big point about.
例如，这对于工业革命很重要，这也是他强调的重点。
I think that’s very complementary to Joe Henrich’s view that the policies of the Church created the society of individualistic psychology.
我认为这与乔·亨利奇的观点非常互补，即教会的政策创造了个人主义心理学社会。
How important a role do you assign to Christianity in the economic and scientific rise of the West?
您认为基督教在西方经济和科学崛起中扮演着多么重要的角色？
I would say I’m similar to Joe.
我想说我和乔很相似。
It’s not so much Christianity .
这与其说是基督教。
.
。
.
。
Actually, maybe I’m not so similar to Joe Henrich.
事实上，也许我和乔·亨里奇不太相似。
I think the biggest effects were on these medieval policies of the Catholic Church that broke down lineages and extended family units and created the individual.
我认为最大的影响是天主教会的这些中世纪政策，这些政策打破了血统和大家庭单位并创造了个人。
I think that’s important.
我认为这很重要。
Joe also talks about moralizing gods and an afterlife being important.
乔还谈到对诸神进行道德说教以及来世的重要性。
I’m still undecided about how important that is compared to these policies of the Catholic Church that created an individualistic psychology.
我仍然不确定这与创造个人主义心理学的天主教会政策相比有多重要。
I would also say, if we think of just purely economic development today in the contemporary period, I definitely don’t think it’s the case that one needs to convert to Christianity to be successful.
我还想说，如果我们只考虑当代纯粹的经济发展，我绝对不认为一个人需要皈依基督教才能成功。
I think that would be confusing causality or confusing correlations we observe historically with causality today.
我认为这会混淆我们历史上观察到的因果关系和今天的因果关系。
But wouldn’t converting to Christianity, at least predictively, be important today in the sense that it would predict ties to the West?
但是，皈依基督教（至少在预测上）在今天是否很重要，因为它可以预测与西方的联系？
You could dispute which is cause and which is effect.
你可能会争论哪个是因，哪个是果。
But if you just saw a particular African country or region have a lot of conversions to Christianity, as happened, say, in Ghana, wouldn’t you become more optimistic about that region?
但如果你看到某个特定的非洲国家或地区有很多人皈依基督教，就像加纳那样，你不会对该地区更加乐观吗？
That’s one theory, except I think one way to think of it is there’s been massive conversion within Africa.
这是一种理论，但我认为一种思考方式是非洲内部发生了大规模的转变。
Now, if you’re asked in many countries the fraction of people that are Christian, it’s going to be like 97 percent, right?
现在，如果你被问到在许多国家有多少人是基督徒，答案会是 97%，对吧？
If they’re not Muslim, which would be the other main religion.
如果他们不是穆斯林，那么这将是另一个主要宗教。
And that’s without any really deep ties to the West.
而且这与西方没有任何真正深厚的联系。
Think of Massachusetts, where I live.
想想我居住的马萨诸塞州。
Conversion rate is much lower, but we think that Massachusetts is more integrated with Europe, for example.
转换率要低得多，但我们认为马萨诸塞州与欧洲的融合程度更高。
So, I think the logic of that is right, but what we’ve seen is mass conversions of Christianity, and even the development of more indigenous Christian religion or Christian hybrid religions, which have also taken off.
所以，我认为这个逻辑是正确的，但我们看到的是基督教的大规模转变，甚至更多本土基督教或基督教混合宗教的发展，这些宗教也已经起飞。
So you don’t need actually a lot of connection with the Western world to have the spread of Christianity.
因此，你实际上并不需要与西方世界有太多的联系来传播基督教。
On things under- and overrated
关于被低估和高估的事情
In the middle of these dialogues, we tend to have a section, overrated versus underrated.
在这些对话的中间，我们往往有一个部分，被高估与被低估。
Are you game for a few?
你是几个人的游戏吗？
Sure.
当然。
Feel free to pass.
随意通过。
First one: Canadian football — overrated or underrated?
第一个：加拿大足球 — 被高估还是被低估？
Oh, definitely underrated.
哦，绝对被低估了。
COWEN: Why is it better than the NFL?
COWEN：为什么它比 NFL 更好？
I’m trying to remember.
我正在努力回忆。
The field is wider, the end zone is deeper, and you only have three downs instead of four downs.
场地更宽，达阵区更深，而且你只有 3 次进攻，而不是 4 次进攻。
So you have much, much more passing.
所以你有很多很多的传球。
If you like the running game, then you’ll like the NFL.
如果你喜欢跑步比赛，那么你就会喜欢 NFL。
But I think these long bombs are much, much more common within the CFL.
但我认为这些长炸弹在 CFL 中更为常见。
They also had — I don’t think this is a reason — but I remember they had a media campaign arguing that people should watch the CFL.
他们还有“——我不认为这是一个理由”——但我记得他们发起了一场媒体宣传活动，主张人们应该观看 CFL。
And their logo at one point was “Our balls are bigger,” which is true.
他们的标志一度是“我们的球更大”，这是事实。
So yeah.
所以是的。
The city of Ottawa in Canada — overrated or underrated?
加拿大渥太华市——被高估还是被低估？
It’s probably underrated as well.
它可能也被低估了。
The big thing — it’s cold, but you have the canal which you can skate up and down.
最重要的是——天气很冷，但你有运河可以滑上滑下。
Many people actually commute to their government jobs on skates, traveling five, six, seven, eight miles.
实际上，许多人穿着溜冰鞋上班，行驶五、六、七、八英里。
That would be pretty cool.
那真是太酷了。
I’ve never done that.
我从来没有这样做过。
Randomized control trials in economics, as a way of doing development economics — overrated or underrated?
经济学中的随机对照试验，作为发展经济学的一种方式——被高估还是被低估？
That’s a good question.
这是一个好问题。
I guess it depends by who.
我想这取决于谁。
Amongst those that the perceptions or how they’re rated by those that developed it, I think accurately rated.
在那些开发者的看法或评价中，我认为评价是准确的。
Amongst individuals that like to jump onto the next big thing, like machine learning or RCTs, I think those individuals are overrated.
在那些喜欢跳入下一个重大事物（例如机器学习或随机对照试验）的人中，我认为这些人被高估了。
It’s a tool that’s helpful, but it’s not the only tool that one would ever want to use for the rest of their life.
这是一个很有用的工具，但它并不是人们想要在余生中使用的唯一工具。
Do you worry that RCTs are being done in too few locales?
您是否担心随机对照试验的地点太少？
That there tend to be economies of scale.
往往存在规模经济。
You get teams set up and people who know how to recruit locals into the experiments, and you keep on writing trials in just a few places, in say, India, English-speaking parts of Africa, and so on.
你组建了团队，并安排了知道如何招募当地人参与实验的人，然后你继续在几个地方进行试验，比如印度、非洲英语地区等等。
Is that a problem?
这是一个问题吗？
Yeah, I think that’s definitely a problem.
是的，我认为这绝对是一个问题。
We see this even more in other fields, say, psychology, where you only run experiments, or behavioral econ, where you only really run experiments amongst Western university students.
我们在其他领域更能看到这一点，比如心理学，你只进行实验，或者行为经济学，你只在西方大学生中真正进行实验。
So development — you can say, “Oh, we’re doing better.” But then, like you say, it’s Nairobi, a few places in India, Uganda.
所以开发 — 你可以说，“哦，我们做得更好了。”但就像你说的，这是内罗毕、印度、乌干达的一些地方。
But there’s a lot of Africa where experiments aren’t done.
但非洲很多地方还没有进行实验。
And the reason is, like you say, it’s huge, huge fixed costs to get things set up.
原因是，就像你说的，设置这些东西需要巨大的固定成本。
If you’re a graduate student and you want to run an experiment, you could go without any connections, try and figure things out, and set up a site.
如果您是一名研究生并且想要进行实验，您可以在没有任何联系的情况下尝试解决问题并建立一个网站。
Or you could code up a survey, send it to IPA or another organization that’s already somewhere, and just run it there.
或者，您可以编写一项调查，将其发送给 IPA 或其他已有的组织，然后在那里运行。
But I think the big problem is that we are learning about developing countries, but a tiny, tiny slice.
但我认为最大的问题是我们正在了解发展中国家，但只是很小很小的一部分。
And the other thing is, those are the countries that are — or societies that are most accessible.
另一件事是，这些国家或社会是最容易接近的。
When we started our work — I guess I could be preachy and say, “Oh, well, we went to the DRC and that was remote.
当我们开始工作时 —— 我想我可以说教说：“哦，好吧，我们去了刚果民主共和国，那是很遥远的地方。
No one had been really working in central DRC.” But now we’ve been there for seven years, and we’re not going anywhere else.
没有人真正在刚果民主共和国中部工作过。”但现在我们已经在那里呆了七年了，我们不会去其他任何地方。
So we’re falling into the exact same trap.
所以我们陷入了完全相同的陷阱。
The use of standardized test scores to help shape or determine graduate admissions in economics — overrated or underrated?
使用标准化考试成绩来帮助确定或确定经济学研究生录取 —— 被高估还是被低估？
It’s very hard to get into Harvard if you don’t have an absolute top math GRE score.
如果你没有绝对最高的 GRE 数学成绩，就很难进入哈佛。
Yeah, I think that’s overrated.
是的，我认为这被高估了。
It does measure some things, like your ability to jump through this hoop and learn this information which is pretty much useless, which is how to solve these tricky logic or math problems.
它确实衡量了一些事情，比如你跳过这个圈子并学习这些几乎无用的信息的能力，这就是如何解决这些棘手的逻辑或数学问题。
And so that’s useful, but the problem is, in order to do that, you have to basically take a summer off and study for the GRE.
这很有用，但问题是，为了做到这一点，你基本上必须休一个暑假，准备 GRE 考试。
And if you’re financially strapped or come from a disadvantaged background, that has a huge, huge cost.
如果你经济拮据或出身不利，那么这将带来巨大的成本。
So I think there’s a bias, a socioeconomic bias that is much worse than the benefit.
所以我认为存在一种偏见，一种比好处更糟糕的社会经济偏见。
What should graduate economics stress that it doesn’t now?
经济学研究生应该强调哪些现在不强调的内容？
What should it do more of at the margin?
它应该在边际上做更多的事情吗？
For me, I think what would be — and you can see this in my recent research — know how to do research that’s more descriptive and that’s softer, or where the data collection is softer.
对我来说，我认为会是 — 你可以在我最近的研究中看到这一点 — 知道如何进行更具描述性、更温和的研究，或者数据收集更温和的研究。
In other words, we never learn — and I don’t know of any courses that teach development economists, when you go to a society, how do you interact with people and ask questions face to face?
换句话说，我们从来没有学过——而且我不知道有什么课程教发展经济学家，当你走进社会时，你如何与人互动，面对面提问？
How do you run focus groups?
您如何开展焦点小组活动？
How do you learn in ways other than surveys?
除了调查之外，您如何通过其他方式学习？
We haven’t done that.
我们还没有这样做。
How do you ask questions about the social structure, about their beliefs, their values and norms?
你如何提出有关社会结构、他们的信仰、价值观和规范的问题？
These things that are kind of invisible, unless you ask about them.
这些东西是看不见的，除非你询问它们。
How do we do that?
我们该怎么做呢？
What should one think about?
一个人应该思考什么？
How are these societies structured?
这些社会是如何构建的？
These sorts of things.
诸如此类的事情。
We’ve taken a very scientific approach: What’s the treatment?
我们采取了非常科学的方法：治疗方法是什么？
What are the outcomes?
结果如何？
But there’s all this contextual stuff, which traditional anthropology looked at, where we’re just ignoring.
但传统人类学所关注的所有这些背景知识，我们却忽略了。
And that’s data, and that’s super important, and we’re not taught how to do that.
这就是数据，这是非常重要的，但我们没有被教导如何做到这一点。
What’s your favorite movie and why?
你最喜欢的电影是什么？为什么？
Oh, favorite movie.
哦，最喜欢的电影。
That’s a good question.
这是一个好问题。
Favorite movie — in the past it was Dazed and Confused.
最喜欢的电影 ——过去是《年少轻狂》。
I must have watched that in university about a hundred times.
我在大学的时候肯定已经看了一百遍了。
A wonderful film.
一部精彩的电影。
I won’t talk about why that was the case.
我不会谈论为什么会这样。
More recently Black Panther, or there was a show, I believe it was called the Queen of Katwe.
最近黑豹，或者有一个节目，我相信它被称为卡威女王。
And one reason I like those is they portray African society in a more positive light, which is more realistic.
我喜欢这些的原因之一是它们以更积极、更现实的角度描绘了非洲社会。
And I think that’s super important.
我认为这非常重要。
I think there’s a lot of implicit bias towards Africans, African Americans, which comes out in media and movies or television shows.
我认为媒体、电影或电视节目中存在着很多针对非洲人、非裔美国人的隐性偏见。
So I like those because those were empowering and showed African cultures in a positive light.
所以我喜欢这些，因为它们赋予了人们力量，并以积极的方式展示了非洲文化。
What do you like best in African music?
您最喜欢非洲音乐中的什么？
I’m not super familiar with African music, except for the local Congolese music, which is —
我对非洲音乐不太熟悉，除了当地的刚果音乐，那就是 ——
Well, that’s one of the peaks, right?
嗯，那是高峰之一，对吗？
Yeah, exactly.
是的，完全正确。
I like it.
我喜欢它。
It’s fun.
这很有趣。
There’s memories that bring me back to the first road trip we did, when we went to visit the Kuba Kingdom.
有些回忆让我回想起我们第一次公路旅行，当时我们去参观库巴王国。
It was in this SUV that we rented, and we had these tapes playing with Congolese music, and that was great.
我们租的这辆 SUV 里播放着刚果音乐的磁带，这太棒了。
We even had the air conditioning for about 10 minutes.
我们甚至开了空调大约10分钟。
Then the tape machine caught on fire, and then the air conditioning broke down.
然后磁带机着火了，然后空调也坏了。
But that music still reminds me of that trip, which was a two- or three-day trip, or actually four- or five-day round trip into the interior, which was my first trip to the Congo.
但那音乐仍然让我想起那次旅行，那是一次两三天的旅行，或者实际上是四五天的内陆往返旅行，这是我第一次去刚果。
What I don’t like is it’s usually associated with dancing, and I’m a very stiff, rigid person that’s not skilled at dancing.
我不喜欢的是它通常与跳舞联系在一起，而且我是一个非常僵硬、僵化的人，不擅长跳舞。
On the lack of Canadian brands
关于缺乏加拿大品牌
The Canadian economy has been very successful, right?
加拿大经济非常成功，对吧？
Everyone would recognize that.
每个人都会认识到这一点。
People love Canada.
人们热爱加拿大。
Canada has amazing soft-power global brand.
加拿大拥有令人惊叹的软实力全球品牌。
Yet there are very few international brands from Canada.
然而，来自加拿大的国际品牌却很少。
Maybe there’s Molson beer, but hardly any others.
也许有莫尔森啤酒，但几乎没有其他啤酒。
Why is that?
这是为什么？
That’s a good question.
这是一个好问题。
I guess it depends on what you mean.
我想这取决于你的意思。
I think international brands — there might be some brands that we don’t know about — the BlackBerry, for example.
我认为国际品牌 —— 可能有一些我们不知道的品牌 ——例如黑莓。
Maybe people do know Bombardier, so that’s one thing.
也许人们确实了解庞巴迪，所以这是一回事。
The other one is whether you include individuals.
另一个问题是是否包括个人。
Maybe Canadians know this, but others don’t.
也许加拿大人知道这一点，但其他人不知道。
There’s a large number of singers — Celine Dion, for example, Shania Twain, Avril Lavigne, which are Canadian.
有很多歌手——席琳·迪翁，比如仙妮亚·唐恩、艾薇儿·拉维尼，都是加拿大人。
And so that’s one of our primary exports.
这是我们的主要出口产品之一。
But also comedians, like Mike Myers, for example, Jim Carrey.
但也有喜剧演员，例如迈克·迈尔斯，例如金·凯瑞。
They’re often not known as such, right?
他们通常不为人所知，对吧？
No one .
没有人 。
.
。
.
。
Well, not no one, but very few people think of these as being Canadian artists.
好吧，不是没有人，但很少有人认为这些是加拿大艺术家。
Yep, that’s exactly right.
是的，完全正确。
That’s the point I’m trying to make.
这就是我想要表达的观点。
There are Canadian products — so let’s call them products — around.
有加拿大产品 — 所以我们就称它们为产品 — 吧。
We actually often don’t know they’re Canadians just because we fit in pretty well.
事实上，我们常常不知道他们是加拿大人，只是因为我们融入得很好。
Even within economics: Ariél Pakes, David Card.
即使在经济学领域：Ariél Pakes、David Card。
They are individuals that don’t have a label of Canadian on their forehead, and they just kind of merge in.
他们的额头上没有加拿大人的标签，他们只是融入其中。
So, I haven’t looked at products, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more products than the average American could name that are Canadian.
所以，我没有看过产品，但如果加拿大的产品比普通美国人能说出的还要多，我也不会感到惊讶。
Do you think having a Canadian background has, in any way, shaped how you approach economic development?
您认为加拿大背景是否以任何方式影响了您的经济发展方式？
A little bit.
一点点。
I think it does affect how I approach economics.
我认为这确实影响了我对待经济学的方式。
One thing about having the Canadian background, in particular, going through all of my schooling, including grad school, within Canada, is that you’re very removed from the centers of knowledge within US economics, namely Cambridge, where I’m at now.
拥有加拿大背景的一件事是，特别是在加拿大完成我所有的学业，包括研究生院，你远离美国经济学的知识中心，即我现在所在的剑桥。
In some ways, that forces you, for better or for worse, to think differently, or think independently relative to what’s going on within the US.
在某些方面，无论好坏，这都会迫使你以不同的方式思考，或者相对于美国国内正在发生的事情进行独立思考。
I think that helped me during grad school, actually.
我认为这实际上对我在研究生期间有所帮助。
The other thing is, when you’re in this pressure cooker of grad school within Cambridge, let’s say, there’s a lot of pressure, so you can’t help but to think about your career, and you can’t help but to think strategically.
另一件事是，当你在剑桥研究生院的高压锅里时，比如说，压力很大，所以你会情不自禁地思考你的职业生涯，你情不自禁地进行战略性思考。
And I think that often goes against research.
我认为这常常与研究背道而驰。
You’re less likely to take risks or to do things that are completely different than what’s being done currently.
你不太可能冒险或做与目前正在做的事情完全不同的事情。
But ideally, we want scientists to do that.
但理想情况下，我们希望科学家能够做到这一点。
Now, your PhD is from the University of Toronto, correct?
现在，您的博士学位来自多伦多大学，对吗？
Yep, that’s right.
是的，没错。
As you know, it’s actually fairly rare for someone tenured at a top-five school not to have a PhD from another top-five school.
如您所知，在排名前五的学校任职的人没有从另一家排名前五的学校获得博士学位的情况实际上相当罕见。
Did you feel there were things you needed to extra learn or catch up on because your degree was from Toronto, that you have to compensate for?
你是否觉得因为你的学位来自多伦多，所以你需要额外学习或赶上一些东西，你必须弥补这一点？
Or you felt this was an advantage, or it was just fine?
或者你觉得这是一个优势，或者只是很好？
There were things I needed to catch up on.
有些事情我需要赶上。
The advantage was exactly less pressure.
好处就是压力更小。
I would have been happy just having a job at any school.
只要在任何学校找到一份工作我都会很高兴。
That really frees one up to just do what they love in terms of research, rather than do what they think has the higher probability.
这确实让人们可以自由地做他们喜欢的研究，而不是做他们认为可能性更高的事情。
In the particular cohorts I was in, I think this has changed for Toronto, so I don’t want to say anything negative about Toronto now.
在我所在的特定群体中，我认为多伦多的情况已经发生了变化，所以我现在不想对多伦多说任何负面的话。
At the time, I think we were a bit behind in terms of applied empirical analysis and, in particular, all the tools that were developed — this was in early 2000s — that were developed recently to deal with causality.
当时，我认为我们在应用实证分析方面有点落后，特别是所有开发的工具（这是在 2000 年代初），最近开发的用于处理因果关系的工具。
To really be strategic and sharp about, and creative about, instruments and RD and all these tricks we use to identify a causal relationship — I felt I was a bit behind in that, actually.
要真正对工具和研发以及我们用来识别因果关系的所有这些技巧保持战略性、敏锐性和创造性 ——实际上，我觉得我在这方面有点落后。
But why aren’t there more people like you in equilibrium?
但为什么没有更多像你这样的人处于平衡状态呢？
You managed to do it.
你成功做到了。
Not to doubt that you are exceptionally talented, but other exceptionally talented people don’t seem to take the path you took.
不用怀疑你有非凡的才华，但其他才华横溢的人似乎并没有走你走过的路。
What happened to make your history different?
发生了什么事情让你的历史变得不同？
Yeah, so why aren’t there people more like me?
是啊，那为什么没有像我这样的人呢？
I think the reason is, right now, we’re in an equilibrium — although there’s policies which are undergoing, right now, that threaten to change this — where the best talent from all over the world comes to US schools and top-five schools, I’d say, or these certain US schools.
我认为原因是，现在我们处于平衡状态——尽管现在正在实施的政策可能会改变这种情况——来自世界各地的最优秀人才来到美国学校和我想说的前五名学校，或者这些特定的美国学校。
There are lots of other Canadians.
还有很多其他加拿大人。
There’s great Canadian graduate students, but they tend to not stay in Canada.
加拿大有很多优秀的研究生，但他们往往不会留在加拿大。
So they would come for their PhD to the United States — to Harvard, MIT, and other schools.
所以他们会来美国攻读博士学位——哈佛大学、麻省理工学院和其他学校。
But even within the US, you won’t find many people at top-five schools with PhDs from UCLA, for instance, or Brown, which are very good schools with some fantastic researchers.
但即使在美国，你也不会在排名前五的学校找到很多拥有加州大学洛杉矶分校或布朗大学博士学位的人，这些都是非常好的学校，拥有一些出色的研究人员。
But the top students just don’t want to go there.
但最优秀的学生就是不想去那里。
Was there some breakdown in the mechanism for spotting your talent, and we ended up lucky that you were slotted somewhere different, got a different perspective?
发现你的才华的机制是否出现了一些故障，而我们最终很幸运地把你安排到了不同的地方，并获得了不同的视角？
Why is there so much concentration?
为什么浓度这么高？
Yeah, that’s a good question, and I don’t know the answer to that, actually.
是的，这是一个好问题，实际上我不知道答案。
If there’s more concentration than in other fields — I think there is, actually.
如果比其他领域更集中 —— 我认为确实如此。
Talking to people in other fields, economics is extremely hierarchical.
与其他领域的人交谈，经济学是极其等级化的。
The difference between the first and the fifth is huge.
第一个和第五个之间的区别是巨大的。
In other fields, it’s more horizontal, and you would just go to different schools based on maybe focuses.
在其他领域，它更加横向，你可能会根据可能的重点去不同的学校。
One could think about expectations being important, that perceptions about the students that would go to a school that’s outside of the top 10, for example, and maybe advisers being less likely to write really strong letters or to get behind an individual just because of perceptions about how vertically structured the discipline is.
人们可能会认为期望很重要，例如，对学生会去前十名之外的学校的看法，也许顾问不太可能仅仅因为对学科垂直结构的看法而写出真正强有力的信件或支持个人。
One other thing possibly, too, which is related to that — I think, really, in grad school you overestimate, as a student, the differences between schools with different rankings.
另一件事也可能与此相关 —— 我认为，实际上，在研究生院，作为一名学生，你高估了不同排名的学校之间的差异。
Once you are at the stage I am at, you realize there’s amazing research at all different types of schools, so this vertical difference that we have in our minds as graduate students isn’t really there and so clean and so strong.
一旦你处于我所处的阶段，你就会意识到所有不同类型的学校都有令人惊叹的研究，所以我们作为研究生的头脑中的这种垂直差异并不真正存在，而且不那么清晰和强烈。
I haven’t answered your question.
我还没有回答你的问题。
I don’t know why there’s more mobility, but maybe it is related to your GRE question or the fact that tuitions are so high in the US, but I don’t have a strong sense.
我不知道为什么流动性比较大，可能和你的GRE问题或者美国学费太高有关，但我没有强烈的感觉。
Gender roles — what is the mechanism tying the use of the former traditional plough in earlier societies to low female labor-force participation today?
性别角色 ——早期社会中传统犁的使用与当今女性劳动力参与率低之间的机制是什么？
That mechanism is basically — if we look at agriculture historically, some societies used an implement called a plough, and others used a hoe or a digging stick or other implements.
这种机制基本上是“如果我们从历史上看农业，一些社会使用一种叫做犁的工具，而另一些社会则使用锄头或挖掘棒或其他工具。
The plough is great.
犁很棒。
You can turn over a lot of soil, and that kills weeds, aerates the soil, prepares it for planting.
你可以翻动大量的土壤，这样可以杀死杂草，使土壤通气，为种植做好准备。
You can do that very quickly, but it requires a lot of upper body strength to control the plough or to pull an animal that uses the plough.
你可以很快地做到这一点，但需要很大的上半身力量来控制犁或拉动使用犁的动物。
So what you see, because there are biological differences between men and women, that that difference — even though it doesn’t mean that women can’t use the plough — caused men to specialize in agriculture and women to specialize in home production.
所以你会看到，由于男性和女性之间存在生物学差异，这种差异（尽管这并不意味着女性不能使用犁）导致男性专门从事农业，女性专门从事家庭生产。
Where you have hoe agriculture, there was more mixing.
哪里有锄头农业，哪里就有更多的混合。
And so, what the data that we’ve looked at seemed to indicate is that generated norms, that it’s just natural for men to work outside the home and women to work inside the home.
因此，我们看到的数据似乎表明，这产生了规范，即男性在家庭外工作和女性在家庭内工作是很自然的。
This is over hundreds or thousands of years.
这已经有数百年或数千年了。
Then you have industrialization, and those same norms are applied to factories or to service jobs.
然后是工业化，这些相同的规范也适用于工厂或服务工作。
That’s the link, basically, to female labor-force participation today and using the plough thousands of years ago.
基本上，这与今天女性劳动力参与和数千年前使用犁的联系。
But if I look, say, at Russia or the Nordic countries, they’ve had a long history of the plough and now very high levels of female labor-force participation, right?
但如果我看看俄罗斯或北欧国家，他们有着悠久的耕耘历史，而且现在女性劳动力参与率非常高，对吗？
Doesn’t that mean it’s not very persistent?
那是不是说明它不太执着呢？
Or even the United States.
甚至是美国。
Yep, that’s exactly right.
是的，完全正确。
So it’s coming back to, well, how much of this is this going to explain?
所以我们又回到了这个问题，这能解释多少？
And are there other factors?
还有其他因素吗？
If you go far enough north, there’s going to be less plough use.
如果你向北走得足够远，犁的使用就会减少。
That’s one thing to keep in mind, but I think the other one is, well, there’s something else that’s been changing, which is we’ve had increased gender equality, which is, in my view, due to economic development and then women being pulled out of the home, right?
这是需要记住的一件事，但我认为另一件事是，嗯，还有其他一些事情正在发生变化，那就是我们已经提高了性别平等，在我看来，这是由于经济发展，然后妇女被赶出了家庭，对吗？
In over the last 50 years, there’s been this dramatic increase in female labor-force participation within the United States, within Europe.
过去 50 年来，美国和欧洲女性劳动力参与率急剧增加。
But if you actually look at the data, even now, the level of female labor-force participation rates, which is 60 percent, 70 percent — that’s actually much lower than African countries, which are much more poor, for example.
但如果你真正看一下数据，即使是现在，女性劳动力参与率的水平也只有60%、70%——实际上比非洲国家要低得多，比如非洲国家要贫穷得多。
So part of the answer to that question is, we really overestimate the amount of gender equality in Western societies.
所以这个问题的部分答案是，我们确实高估了西方社会性别平等的程度。
We think, of course, “We’re developed, we’re great.
当然，我们认为，“我们很发达，我们很棒。
We must be great on all these dimensions.
我们必须在所有这些方面都表现出色。
We’ve made so much progress since World War II.” But I think that’s overestimating just how great we are.
自第二次世界大战以来，我们取得了很大进步。”但我认为这高估了我们的伟大程度。
Once you account for these things like income, then why we’re not better than we should be, I think, is explained by the plough.
一旦你考虑了收入等因素，那么我认为，为什么我们没有比我们应该做的更好，犁可以解释这一点。
Being a former communist country in Eastern Europe seems to explain female labor-force participation very well in those countries.
作为东欧前共产主义国家似乎可以很好地解释这些国家的女性劳动力参与率。
They tie almost uniformly.
他们几乎均匀地打结。
Yep.
是的。
In your worldview, is that something we should expect to persist, or is that a temporary aberration, and now they’re going to return to their older, plough-based histories?
在你的世界观中，这是我们应该期望持续存在的事情，还是这是暂时的失常，现在他们要回到他们古老的、以犁为基础的历史？
No, I would expect it to persist, and there is some work.
不，我希望它能够持续下去，并且还有一些工作要做。
Pamela Campa has a paper in the Review of Economics and Statistics that shows persistence at least up until the contemporary period, so I would expect it to persist, actually.
帕梅拉·坎帕（Pamela Campa）在《经济学与统计评论》上发表了一篇论文，该论文显示了至少直到当代的持续性，所以我预计它实际上会持续下去。
One thing about that — in this form of persistence, which is — one would have to look at — but a plausible story is, once you have women participating in manufacturing, low-end manufacturing, for example, or light manufacturing, then you develop a comparative advantage in that.
关于这一点，“以这种形式的持久性，这是”“人们必须关注”但一个合理的故事是，一旦女性参与制造业，例如低端制造业或轻工业制造业，那么您就会在这方面发展出比较优势。
Then the norms affect your comparative advantage, and so the supply of women working affects the demand because that’s what you’re good at; that’s what you export.
然后规范会影响你的比较优势，因此女性工作的供给会影响需求，因为那是你所擅长的；这就是您导出的内容。
And then that affects the supply.
然后这会影响供应。
So there’s an equilibrium where women work and you specialize in female-friendly products, and another equilibrium where women don’t work and you specialize in other products which are less female friendly.
因此，存在一种平衡，即女性工作，你专注于女性友好的产品，而另一种平衡，女性不工作，你专注于其他对女性不太友好的产品。
And so, one would be, for example, Eastern Europe, and the other one could be Saudi Arabia, for example.
因此，一个可以是东欧，另一个可以是沙特阿拉伯。
You’ve written a very famous paper showing that a society or a country skill at contract enforcement helps explain a good deal of the patterns of its trade.
您写了一篇非常著名的论文，表明社会或国家在合同执行方面的技能有助于解释其贸易模式。
Within your framework, how would you explain the last 30 years of China?
在你的框架内，你会如何解释中国过去30年的历史？
Do you see it as fitting your hypothesis?
您认为这符合您的假设吗？
An exception?
例外吗？
How good is China at contract enforcement, and indeed, how good are they at trade?
中国在合同执行方面有多出色，实际上，他们在贸易方面有多出色？
They’re very good at trade.
他们非常擅长贸易。
I could look at China — that would be super interesting to go back and look at China.
我可以看看中国——如果回去看看中国会非常有趣。
There’s two things.
有两件事。
One is, if you thought that the contracting environment in China was not good, which is not a given — just because you have an autocratic regime doesn’t mean that you have mechanisms for dispute resolution, and you’re able to enforce contracts, and that things are dependable and reliable.
一是，如果你认为中国的承包环境不好，这不是必然的——你有一个专制政权，并不意味着你有解决纠纷的机制，你能够执行合同，事情就可靠、可靠。
But let’s say that China isn’t as good as other countries, Western countries, at contract enforcement.
但我们可以说，中国在合同执行方面不如其他国家、西方国家。
It’s not as dependable.
它不太可靠。
What you would expect, then, is for China to specialize in goods that are not contract intensive.
那么，你所期望的是中国将专注于非合同密集型商品。
There’re still specializing in manufacturing, so that analysis was only looking at manufacturing, but they’re going to be producing lower-end products.
他们仍然专注于制造业，因此分析只关注制造业，但他们将生产低端产品。
That’s actually not inconsistent with what they’ve specialized in historically.
这实际上与他们历史上的专业领域并不矛盾。
which is manufacturers, but lower-end manufacturers.
这是厂家，但是低端厂家。
That would be my best guess, at this point, at that issue.
在这一点上，在那个问题上，这将是我最好的猜测。
If I think of Singapore as a paradigmatic example of what your theory would explain, should we expect skill at contract enforcement to actually explain FDI patterns more strongly than trade?
如果我认为新加坡是你的理论所解释的一个范例，那么我们是否应该期望合同执行技能能够比贸易更有力地解释外国直接投资模式？
Because trade — at some point you can just take the goods, right?
因为贸易 —— 在某些时候你可以直接拿走货物，对吗？
And you have the stuff, and you can forget about the contract.
而且你拥有了这些东西，你就可以忘记合同了。
Whereas when you do foreign direct investment, you’re always at the mercy of the other country.
而当你进行外国直接投资时，你总是受到其他国家的摆布。
Singapore has amazing contract enforcement.
新加坡的合同执行能力令人惊叹。
They even export it as a service widely, and FDI in Singapore is remarkably high.
他们甚至将其作为服务广泛出口，新加坡的外国直接投资非常高。
So should contract enforcement explain FDI better than trade?
那么合同执行是否应该比贸易更好地解释外国直接投资呢？
Yeah, it might.
是的，可能会。
Yeah, I think FDI — we have less data.
是的，我认为 FDI ——我们的数据较少。
The data is less precise.
数据不太精确。
Trade countries around the world — they’re charging tariffs on these products, so you have imports very precisely documented.
世界各地的贸易国家 ——他们对这些产品征收关税，因此进口记录非常精确。
FDI — I think that’s not the case.
FDI — 我认为情况并非如此。
So we broadly know where it goes.
所以我们大致知道它的去向。
Definitely.
确实。
They’re not huge mysteries, even if we don’t have exact numbers.
尽管我们没有确切的数字，但它们并不是什么巨大的谜团。
Yeah.
是的。
And then, the one thing that one needs to know or keep in mind — the research I was doing was about the composition of trade or the composition of FDI.
然后，人们需要了解或牢记的一件事是——我正在做的研究是关于贸易构成或外国直接投资构成的。
So we’d want to know FDI that produces which types of products.
因此，我们想知道生产哪些类型产品的外国直接投资。
But otherwise, I agree completely that the pattern of FDI or where a foreign investment is and in which industries, in which countries, should also be predicted by the ability of a country to enforce contracts.
但除此之外，我完全同意，外国直接投资的模式或外国投资的地点、行业、国家，也应该通过一个国家执行合同的能力来预测。
What did you learn about development that was unusual, living for six months in South Korea?
在韩国生活了六个月，您从不寻常的发展中学到了什么？
That’s a good question.
这是一个好问题。
Obvious lessons, but above and beyond those, what really struck you?
显而易见的教训，但除此之外，真正令您印象深刻的是什么？
I think the importance of culture, actually, living in South Korea.
我认为文化的重要性，实际上，生活在韩国。
The culture in South Korea is very different.
韩国的文化非常不同。
Obviously, South Korea is a dramatic success story, and I think a lot of that has to do with what South Koreans viewed as important: education, working hard, allegiance to the company.
显然，韩国是一个戏剧性的成功故事，我认为这很大程度上与韩国人认为重要的东西有关：教育、努力工作、对公司的忠诚。
Those things are all hugely important.
这些事情都非常重要。
I have a lot of very close friends in South Korea.
我在韩国有很多非常亲密的朋友。
Until recently, they would never take vacations.
直到最近，他们还从不休假。
You would get vacation, but it would be very shameful or against the norms if you actually took them.
你会得到假期，但如果你真的休假，那将是非常可耻的或违反规范的。
Same with Saturdays — you would always work on Saturdays.
周六也一样——周六你总是要工作。
And then the drive for education was amazing.
然后对教育的推动是惊人的。
There’s a saying in Korea — I might not get it exactly right, but “If a high school student sleeps five hours a night, they’ll fail.” They need to work so hard, they’re only sleeping four hours a night.
韩国有句俗话 ——“我可能不太理解，但是“如果高中生每晚睡五个小时，他们就会失败”。他们需要努力工作，每晚只睡四个小时。
And I think these are all just motivations.
我认为这些都只是动机。
They’ve internally motivated their norms, their values.
他们在内部激发了他们的规范和价值观。
So South Korea has these values of individual achievement, but then overlaid with values of collectivism, like wanting to have individual success go towards the greater good, which was the success of the country.
因此，韩国拥有个人成就的价值观，但又叠加了集体主义的价值观，比如希望个人的成功走向更大的利益，这就是国家的成功。
And so that, I think, again, coming from an individualistic background, was eye-opening to me.
因此，我认为，来自个人主义背景的这一点再次让我大开眼界。
But why was South Korea then so poor for so long?
但为什么韩国会长期贫穷呢？
Maybe it was somewhat well off under Joseon Dynasty, but if you look at 1960, 1900, 1800, as far as I know — we don’t have good data, but it had a reputation for being a place of extreme poverty, right?
也许朝鲜王朝时期比较富裕，但如果你看看1960年、1900年、1800年，据我所知 —— 我们没有很好的数据，但它以极度贫困而闻名，对吧？
Yeah, but it did have all of these kingdoms, historically, which makes it similar to — in terms of its history of state formation — to Japan or to China and more similar to that.
是的，但从历史上看，它确实拥有所有这些王国，这使得它与“就其国家形成的历史而言”与日本或中国相似，而且更相似。
It was geographically a terrible place, sandwiched between China and Japan, but it was able to survive, actually.
它的地理位置很糟糕，夹在中国和日本之间，但实际上它能够生存下来。
So that’s actually a testament to the Korean society.
这实际上是韩国社会的一个证明。
And if you look at things like architecture, food, academics, I think Korea has always been extremely sophisticated.
如果你看看建筑、食物、学术等方面，我认为韩国一直非常复杂。
There were periods of colonization, and I have to go back and look at the data of Korea from the early 20th century or 19th century, but that explains a lot of it, I would guess.
有过殖民时期，我必须回顾一下20世纪初或19世纪初韩国的数据，但我猜这可以解释很多事情。
I would say there are these latent characteristics that aren’t reflected in per capita income, which are important for subsequent development.
我想说的是，有一些潜在的特征是人均收入中没有体现出来的，这对后续的发展很重要。
But doesn’t this get us back to some problems with the persistence idea?
但这是否让我们回到了持久性思想的一些问题上？
Korea, like most places, has multiple pasts.
与大多数地方一样，韩国也有多重过去。
It has a past of extreme poverty, a past of extreme sophistication.
它有一个极端贫困的过去，一个极端复杂的过去。
You can always pick out one or the other path and explain, through persistence, a present.
你总是可以选择一条或另一条路，并通过坚持不懈地解释一份礼物。
You could pick out the past of extreme poverty and explain North Korea as a persistence of that.
你可以挑出极端贫困的过去，并将朝鲜解释为这种情况的持续存在。
But ideally, you want to know if there’s persistence on net in the whole dataset, and then you’ve got to line up all the pasts.
但理想情况下，你想知道整个数据集中是否存在网络上的持久性，然后你必须将所有过去的数据排列起来。
But the Jeff Sachs point that we’re just not very good at predicting which countries will do well next — shouldn’t that just make us outright skeptical about persistence?
但杰夫·萨克斯指出，我们只是不太擅长预测哪些国家接下来会表现出色——这难道不应该让我们对持久性彻底怀疑吗？
If you go back to 1960, who predicted then which countries would do well?
如果回到 1960 年，谁能预测到哪些国家会表现出色？
Even knowing ex post which ones did well, it’s very hard to find measures that will predict that, even knowing the winners.
即使事后知道哪些表现良好，也很难找到能够预测这一点的衡量标准，即使知道获胜者。
I think one important thing here is thinking about levels or growth rates.
我认为这里重要的一件事是考虑水平或增长率。
Jeffrey Sachs’s statement, it sounds like, is about growth rates.
杰弗里·萨克斯的声明听起来像是关于增长率的。
We can’t predict which is going to be the next country that’s going to grow successfully over the next 10 years, though I don’t know if that’s true, but let’s say that that’s true.
我们无法预测哪个国家将成为下一个在未来十年内成功增长的国家，尽管我不知道这是否属实，但我们可以说这是真的。
If you had money, I’m sure you would bet on certain countries having a higher level of income over 10 years from now than others.
如果你有钱，我相信你会押注某些国家在 10 年后的收入水平会高于其他国家。
I think we have a pretty good sense of which countries will have higher levels of income.
我认为我们很清楚哪些国家的收入水平会更高。
So the persistence isn’t about growth rates.
因此，持久性与增长率无关。
I don’t know of any actual studies that look at growth rates in the past and growth rates today because you’re going to have convergence and all these sorts of things.
我不知道有任何实际的研究关注过去的增长率和今天的增长率，因为你将会出现趋同和所有这些类型的事情。
But it’s about levels.
但这是关于水平的。
The way you think of it in the Solow model, it’s underlying characteristics which are going to change the steady-state level of per capita income in different societies.
你在索洛模型中的思考方式是，它的潜在特征将改变不同社会人均收入的稳态水平。
Hopefully that makes sense.
希望这是有道理的。
I think we can predict which society is going to have higher levels of per capita income 20 years from now.
我想我们可以预测20年后哪个社会的人均收入水平会更高。
Last question.
最后一个问题。
This is a quotation from you.
这是您的引述。
I’ll read it off.
我会读一下。
“I’ve done a lot of different jobs, working at a range of places, including automotive stores (stock boy), newspaper (editor/photographer), freight company (laborer), paint factory (filled paint and made paint), ski hill (worked in the office), book publisher (laborer), and private tutoring.” How has that shaped your worldview?
“我做过很多不同的工作，在不同的地方工作，包括汽车商店（库存男孩）、报纸（编辑/摄影师）、货运公司（工人）、油漆厂（填充油漆和制造油漆）、滑雪场（在办公室工作）、图书出版商（工人）和私人辅导。”这如何塑造了你的世界观？
Not everyone who teaches at Harvard has that background, right?
并不是每个在哈佛教书的人都有这样的背景，对吧？
Yeah, yeah.
是啊是啊。
I think I shaped my worldview in terms of opportunity, thinking about opportunity, thinking about policies that affect mobility, thinking about policies that affect inequality.
我认为我从机会的角度塑造了我的世界观，思考机会，思考影响流动性的政策，思考影响不平等的政策。
And the reason is, I have experience growing up in a family that was definitely lower income or very low income and having some insight into what that does to you psychologically, how difficult it is to get out of that environment.
原因是，我有在一个收入绝对较低或收入非常低的家庭中长大的经历，并且对这对你的心理造成的影响有一些洞察力，摆脱那种环境是多么困难。
And I was extremely lucky growing up in a country like Canada, where, actually, there were many pathways for a family that’s very low income.
我非常幸运地在加拿大这样的国家长大，实际上，对于一个收入非常低的家庭来说，有很多出路。
After moving to the US, it’s very clear, there are many fewer pathways.
搬到美国后，很明显，途径少了很多。
And if you grew up in upper-middle-class, upper-class family, that’s something that you just don’t realize, just how hard it is for an individual that’s at the lowest rung of the ladder within the US to move up.
如果你在中上层阶级、上层阶级家庭长大，你只是没有意识到，对于一个在美国处于社会最底层的人来说，想要向上爬是多么困难。
You basically can’t make any mistakes.
基本上你不能犯任何错误。
So I think that’s one thing that my history has taught me.
所以我认为这是我的历史教会我的一件事。
Nathan Nunn, thank you very much.
内森·纳恩，非常感谢你。
It’s been a pleasure chatting.
聊天很愉快。
Great.
伟大的。
Thank you.
谢谢。
Great to talk with you.
很高兴与你交谈。