Nicholas Bloom on Management, Productivity, and Scientific Progress (Ep. 102)

I sometimes put it this way: If I read a new and interesting article, whether it be on productivity in science, the productivity of firms, how effective it is to work from home, the effect of uncertainty on economic output, then I think, “Well, who’s the most likely economist to be a coauthor or author of this article?” That one person is Nick Bloom.

我有时会这样说：如果我读到一篇新的、有趣的文章，无论是关于科学生产力、企业生产力、在家工作的效率如何、不确定性对经济产出的影响，然后我会想，“那么，谁是最有可能成为这篇文章的合著者或作者的经济学家？”那个人就是尼克·布鲁姆。

Nick, welcome.

尼克，欢迎。

I think of what’s going on at Stanford.

我想起了斯坦福大学发生的事情。

I know there’s a huge explosion of work in Stanford.

我知道斯坦福大学的工作量呈爆炸式增长。

Several of my friends and colleagues on campus are working on genetic medicine.

我校园里的几个朋友和同事正在研究基因医学。

All kinds of amazing things there, actually.

实际上，那里有各种各样令人惊奇的事情。

Wearables — one of my friends here is actually working with Apple on getting devices in the Apple Watch so it can check your heart rate and tell you in advance if there’s complications in your heart and basically pre-warn you.

可穿戴设备 ——我的一个朋友实际上正在与Apple合作，将设备安装到Apple Watch中，这样它就可以检查你的心率，并提前告诉你心脏是否有并发症，并且基本上可以预先警告你。

I don’t want to be too super pessimistic that all science is dying, and you’re right.

我不想对所有科学都在消亡感到过于悲观，你是对的。

You’re exactly right.

你是完全正确的。

In the research we looked at, we showed, for example, progress on cancer had an acceleration in the ’80s and ’90s.

例如，在我们研究的研究中，我们发现癌症的进展在 80 年代和 90 年代加速。

It seems that field after field eventually starts to decline.

似乎一个又一个的领域最终开始衰退。

And there aren’t enough new fields that are growing to offset the bulk of the current fields that are declining.

而且没有足够多的新油田增长来抵消当前大部分正在下降的油田。

You mentioned Moore’s Law.

你提到了摩尔定律。

The number of transistors you can pack onto a silicon chip has been roughly doubling every two years.

硅芯片上可以封装的晶体管数量大约每两年增加一倍。

That was kind of Moore’s Law, and that’s been roughly held constant, actually, for about 50 years.

这就是摩尔定律，而且实际上大约 50 年来一直保持不变。

It’s just, we’ve been pouring way more scientists into that.

只是，我们已经投入了更多的科学家来研究这个问题。

We estimate since the ’70s, there are 18 times more scientists just to hold that constant.

我们估计，自 70 年代以来，为了保持这一不变，科学家数量增加了 18 倍。

In that sense, if you’re putting in a lot more scientists to generate the same increase in compute power, you’d say that progress is slowing down.

从这个意义上说，如果你投入更多的科学家来产生同样的计算能力增长，你会说进展正在放缓。

Now, it seems obvious that each field is slowing down.

现在，很明显每个领域都在放缓。

The question is, are there enough new fields that are coming into being to offset that?

问题是，是否有足够多的新领域正在出现来抵消这一影响？

It just appears that, at least since the 1950s in the US, the answer is no. There are new fields coming on board, but just not fast enough to offset the decline.

至少自 20 世纪 50 年代以来的美国，答案似乎是否定的。有新的油田加入，但速度不够快，不足以抵消下降的影响。

So right now —

所以现在 ——

So batteries — we looked at this, actually.

所以电池 ——实际上我们研究过这个。

There are several areas we looked at in our paper.

我们在论文中研究了几个领域。

I had a paper with Chad Jones, John Van Reenen, and Michael Webb looking at whether innovation and productivity is slowing down.

我与 Chad Jones、John Van Reenen 和 Michael Webb 合作发表了一篇论文，研究创新和生产力是否正在放缓。

We looked at several sectors to try and evaluate this.

我们研究了几个部门来尝试评估这一点。

Some of them lacked complete data in either inputs or outputs, but one of them is batteries, and batteries have made slow but steady progress.

其中一些在输入或输出方面缺乏完整的数据，但其中之一是电池，电池已经取得了缓慢但稳定的进展。

For example, lithium-ion batteries are much more effective.

例如，锂离子电池的效率要高得多。

Recently, batteries have gotten to the stage where electric cars are feasible because you need to, obviously, store enough energy.

最近，电池已经达到了电动汽车可行的阶段，因为显然你需要存储足够的能量。

It’s not so much the electric motor is a new idea — it’s that batteries make it possible.

与其说电动机是一个新想法，不如说是电池使之成为可能。

If you want to ask what areas are new, I would practically look at, say, patents.

如果你想问哪些领域是新的，我实际上会看看专利。

There’s an enormous amount of new companies floating on the stock market.

股票市场上有大量新公司上市。

Patents are a very simple way to look at what technologies are new, in the sense that they add new fields.

专利是一种了解新技术的非常简单的方法，因为它们增加了新的领域。

You look at patents that don’t seem to patent or cite much that’s gone before them.

你看到的专利似乎没有申请专利，也没有引用太多之前已经存在的内容。

They’re truly radical.

他们确实很激进。

And there’s a huge research literature on exactly this.

关于这一点有大量的研究文献。

Sure, the British were more advanced at that point, but not dramatically.

当然，英国人当时更先进，但并不显着。

The estimates were like 0.1 percent a year, so very low.

估计每年约为 0.1%，非常低。

Then the Industrial Revolution starts, and it starts to speed up and speed up and speed up.

然后工业革命开始了，并且开始加速、加速、加速。

And technological progress, in terms of productivity growth, peaks in the 1950s at something like 3 to 4 percent a year, and then it’s been falling ever since.

就生产率增长而言，技术进步在 20 世纪 50 年代达到顶峰，每年增长 3% 至 4%，此后一直在下降。

Then you ask that rate of fall — it’s 5 percent, roughly.

然后你问下降率 ——大概是 5%。

It would have fallen if we held inputs constant.

如果我们保持投入不变，它就会下降。

The one thing that’s been offsetting that fall in the rate of progress is we’ve put more and more resources into it.

抵消进展速度下降的一件事是我们投入了越来越多的资源。

Again, if you think of the US, the number of research universities has exploded, the number of firms having research labs.

再说一次，如果你想想美国，研究型大学的数量以及拥有研究实验室的公司数量都呈爆炸式增长。

Thomas Edison, for example, was the first lab about 100 years ago, but post–World War II, most large American companies have been pushing huge amounts of cash into R&D.

例如，托马斯·爱迪生 (Thomas Edison) 是大约 100 年前第一个实验室，但二战后，大多数美国大公司一直将大量现金投入研发。

But despite all of that increase in inputs, actually, productivity growth has been slowing over the last 50 years.

但尽管投入不断增加，但实际上，过去 50 年来生产率增长一直在放缓。

That’s the sense in which it’s harder and harder to find new ideas.

从这个意义上说，寻找新想法变得越来越困难。

We’re putting more inputs into labs, but actually productivity growth is falling.

我们正在向实验室投入更多投入，但实际上生产力增长正在下降。

Why is it happening at the aggregate level?

为什么会在总体层面发生这种情况？

I think there are three reasons going on.

我认为有三个原因。

One is actually come back to Ben Jones, who had an important paper, which is called, I believe, “ Renaissance Man.” This came out 15 years ago or something.

其中一个实际上是回到本·琼斯（Ben Jones），他发表了一篇重要的论文，我相信这篇论文被称为“文艺复兴时期的人”。这是 15 年前发布的。

The idea was, it takes longer and longer for us to train.

我们的想法是，我们训练的时间越来越长。

Just in economics — when I first started in economics, it was standard to do a four-year PhD.

就经济学而言——当我刚开始学习经济学时，攻读四年制博士学位是标准做法。

It’s now a six-year PhD, plus many of the PhD students have done a pre-doc, so they’ve done an extra two years.

现在是六年制的博士学位，加上许多博士生已经完成了博士预科，所以他们又多做了两年。

We’re taking three or four years longer just to get to the research frontier.

我们需要多花三四年的时间才能到达研究前沿。

There’s so much more knowledge before us, it just takes longer to train up.

我们面前有更多的知识，只是需要更长的时间来训练。

That’s one story.

这是一个故事。

A second story I’ve heard is, research is getting more complicated.

我听到的第二个故事是，研究变得越来越复杂。

I remember I sat down with a former CEO of SRI, Stanford Research Institute, which is a big research lab out here that’s done many things.

我记得我和斯坦福研究所 SRI 的前首席执行官坐在一起，这是一个大型研究实验室，做了很多事情。

For example, Siri came out of SRI.

例如，Siri 就出自 SRI。

He said, “Increasingly it’s interdisciplinary teams now.”

他说：“现在越来越多的跨学科团队。”

It used to be you’d have one or two scientists could come up with great ideas.

过去，一两个科学家就能想出好主意。

Now, you’re having to combine a couple.

现在，你必须结合几个。

I can’t remember if he said for Siri, but he said there are three or four different research groups in SRI that were being pulled together to do that.

我不记得他是否指的是 Siri，但他说 SRI 中有三四个不同的研究小组正在聚集在一起做这件事。

That of course makes it more expensive.

这当然使它更贵。

And when you think of biogenetics, combining biology and genetics, or bioengineering, there’s many more cross-field areas.

当你想到生物遗传学、生物学和遗传学的结合或生物工程时，还有更多的跨领域领域。

Then finally, as you say, I suspect regulation costs, various other factors are making it harder to undertake research.

最后，正如你所说，我怀疑监管成本和其他各种因素使得开展研究变得更加困难。

A lot of that’s probably good.

其中很多可能都是好的。

I’d have to look at individual regulations.

我必须查看个别规定。

Health and safety, for example, is probably a good idea, but in the same way, that is almost certainly making it more expensive to run labs.

例如，健康和安全可能是一个好主意，但同样，这几乎肯定会使实验室的运营成本更高。

In fact, COVID is a huge pushback.

事实上，新冠疫情是一个巨大的阻力。

I was talking just before the shutdown to a good friend of mine, and she said she has a big lab that has a number of animals and longer-running experiments going on.

就在政府关闭之前，我和我的一位好朋友聊天，她说她有一个大实验室，里面有许多动物，并且正在进行长期的实验。

In fact, the shutdown has been extremely expensive.

事实上，关闭的代价极其高昂。

When we reopen with social distancing, of course, the costs are going to go up again.

当然，当我们在保持社交距离的情况下重新开放时，成本将会再次上升。

These are all factors pushing on your point of regulation.

这些都是推动你的监管点的因素。

It’s just expensive running research.

进行研究的成本很高。

Doesn’t the explanation have to be that scientific efforts used to be devoted to public goods much more, and now they’re being devoted to private goods?

难道解释不应该是科学努力过去更多地致力于公共产品，而现在却致力于私人产品吗？

That’s the only explanation that’s consistent with rising wages for science but a declining social output from her research, her scientific productivity.

这是唯一与科学工资上涨但她的研究的社会产出、科学生产力下降相一致的解释。

In fact, it always made me wonder — when I first pulled up this data six, seven years ago — it made me wonder about the story of Stanford.

事实上，它总是让我想知道“六七年前，当我第一次提取这些数据时”，它让我对斯坦福大学的故事感到好奇。

Because when I arrived at Stanford, I was told that Stanford prewar really was like a finishing university.

因为当我到达斯坦福大学时，我被告知战前的斯坦福大学真的就像一所精修大学。

It wasn’t really a big deal.

这其实没什么大不了的。

Postwar, Stanford got its big break because of lots of research from NASA dollars.

战后，斯坦福大学由于美国宇航局资助的大量研究而获得了重大突破。

I was thinking, “Well, government R&D is not such a big factor anymore.

我在想，“好吧，政府研发不再是一个重要因素了。

It’s mainly private firms.” That’s because postwar, it was the big driver, and the government pulled back from R&D, and private firms have taken over.

主要是私营企业。”这是因为战后，它是主要的推动力，政府退出了研发，由私营公司接管。

The reason that’s the fullest possible driver of the decline in productivity, as you point out, is government R&D tends to be more focused on the R, the research, and private R&D more on the D, the development.

正如您所指出的，这是生产力下降的最可能的驱动因素，因为政府研发往往更注重研发，而私人研发则更注重研发。

The R, you may think, has more spillovers, longer-run benefits, and is what’s going to drive long-term growth.

您可能会认为，R 具有更多的溢出效应、更长期的效益，并且能够推动长期增长。

So yes, that will be another role for policy, in fact.

所以，是的，事实上，这将是政策的另一个作用。

I’m embarrassed I left it out, but a big driver would be .

我很尴尬我把它遗漏了，但一个大司机会是的。

.

。

.

。

It feels hard to be saying this, being in a university, but the government should fund more public R&D.

在大学里说这些感觉很困难，但政府应该资助更多的公共研发。

I can get on the economic-status-on-wages question if you want, but I can see you have a question because we’re looking at each other on Zoom.

如果您愿意，我可以回答工资经济状况问题，但我可以看到您有一个问题，因为我们正在 Zoom 上互相交流。

It has to be within private scientific progress that there’s a diversion of effort away from public goods and toward more private goods.

必须在私人科学进步的范围内，将努力从公共物品转向更多的私人物品。

Or no?

或者没有？

Just to be clear, this is not a new thesis.

需要明确的是，这不是一个新论文。

You have your book, The Great Stagnation, and Patrick Collison, for example, has worked on this more recently.

例如，你有书《大停滞》，帕特里克·科里森最近就在研究这个问题。

There’s that book, The Death of Science.

有一本书，《科学之死》。

I’m embarrassed I’ve forgotten who the author was.

可惜我忘了作者是谁了。

It’s not obvious.

这并不明显。

One reason is, there’s plenty of evidence on knowledge spillovers being localized.

原因之一是，有大量证据表明知识溢出是本地化的。

There’s a lot of evidence, for example, that you’re more likely to coauthor with your colleagues in your own university or the same firm.

例如，有大量证据表明，您更有可能与自己大学或同一家公司的同事共同创作。

I guess the same firm is more obvious, but if that was true, you may think the transmission of ideas from China to the US is less effective than within the US.

我想同一家公司的情况更明显，但如果这是真的，你可能会认为从中国到美国的思想传播不如在美国内部有效。

I also don’t know if the increase in Chinese and Indian R&D by their government sectors is enough to offset the reduction by the US, and whether it’s in the right areas.

我也不知道中国和印度政府部门研发的增加是否足以抵消美国研发的减少，以及是否在正确的领域。

It may be that a lot of developing countries’ R&D is more, say, defense and national security focused, which I suspect has lower tradeoffs.

许多发展中国家的研发可能更注重国防和国家安全，我怀疑这会带来较低的权衡。

The nice thing about the US and things like the National Science Foundation and the National Institute for Health is they would put huge amounts of funding on very basic research that had broad value.

美国以及国家科学基金会和国家卫生研究院等机构的好处在于，他们会投入大量资金用于具有广泛价值的基础研究。

An MIT researcher goes to the NSF, gets funding for research.

麻省理工学院的一名研究人员前往美国国家科学基金会，获得研究经费。

They tend to be focused on very basic things that are of interest to broad science, and that has, I suspect, the largest value in.

他们倾向于关注广泛科学感兴趣的非常基本的事情，我怀疑这具有最大的价值。

I’m not aware of any huge criticisms of how the research agencies hand out their money.

我不知道对研究机构如何分配资金有任何巨大的批评。

I’m sure there’s lots of quibbling around the edges.

我确信有很多关于边缘的争论。

I’ve been involved in refereeing for the NSF, for example.

例如，我曾参与过 NSF 的裁判工作。

I’ve always been very impressed the way they’ve run it.

他们的运作方式一直给我留下了深刻的印象。

And the ESRC, for example, in the UK.

例如，英国的 ESRC。

I think the big issue is just their budgets.

我认为最大的问题只是他们的预算。

Their budgets, sure, are growing, but they’re not growing nearly as fast as GDP.

当然，他们的预算在增长，但增长速度远不及 GDP 增长速度。

As a result, government is basically pulling back from R&D.

结果，政府基本上退出了研发。

It’s being, to some extent, replaced by universities.

在某种程度上，它正在被大学取代。

If you think of these elite universities — their enormous endowments are partly being funneled into early-stage R&D.

如果你想想这些精英大学——它们巨大的捐赠部分被投入到早期研发中。

Another fascinating observation on the US is, increasingly, growth is being driven by knowledge flows out of elite research universities, even in the stock market.

对美国的另一个有趣的观察是，经济增长越来越多地受到精英研究型大学的知识流动的推动，甚至在股票市场也是如此。

The stock market, over the last 10, 15 years, has almost entirely been driven by high tech.

过去10、15年里，股市几乎完全是由高科技驱动的。

In many ways, you can think of it as clustering around elite US research universities.

从很多方面来说，你可以将其视为聚集在美国精英研究型大学周围。

They are stepping in, to some extent, to fill the gap left by government.

在某种程度上，他们正在介入，以填补政府留下的空白。

Another fascinating observation on the US is, increasingly, growth is being driven by knowledge flows out of elite research universities, even in the stock market.

对美国的另一个有趣的观察是，经济增长越来越多地受到精英研究型大学的知识流动的推动，甚至在股票市场也是如此。

The stock market, over the last 10, 15 years, has almost entirely been driven by high tech.

过去10、15年里，股市几乎完全是由高科技驱动的。

In many ways, you can think of it as clustering around elite US research universities.

从很多方面来说，你可以将其视为聚集在美国精英研究型大学周围。

They are stepping in, to some extent, to fill the gap left by government.

在某种程度上，他们正在介入，以填补政府留下的空白。

To explain what I mean, management practices — the basics are, do you collect information and use it to improve yourself?

为了解释我的意思，管理实践 ——基础是，你是否收集信息并利用它来提高自己？

Think of lean, collecting information all the time, and having improvement processes.

想想精益、始终收集信息并制定改进流程。

Secondly, do you train and promote employees, try to promote the best people, trying to avoid things like promoting family, friends, or long-serving employees?

其次，你是否培训和提拔员工，尽量提拔最优秀的人，尽量避免提拔家人、朋友或长期服务的员工？

So meritocratic HR systems.

因此，精英人力资源系统。

I’m not going to say American firms are perfect.

我不会说美国公司是完美的。

They’re definitely not perfect.

他们绝对不完美。

There are many management scandals.

管理丑闻很多。

But on average, American firms are much better managed, and they take that with them abroad.

但平均而言，美国公司的管理要好得多，他们将这一点带到了国外。

There’s this whole literature that has been sometimes called dark matter, or explaining why we seem to have this endless negative balance of trade but positive balance on our investments abroad.

这整篇文献有时被称为暗物质，或者解释了为什么我们的贸易似乎有无穷无尽的负平衡，但我们的海外投资却有正平衡。

American companies seem to make huge profits abroad.

美国公司似乎在海外赚取了巨额利润。

One big explanation is they’re just exploiting lots of this intangible capital, which we think of as good management.

一个重要的解释是，他们只是在利用大量的无形资本，我们认为这是良好的管理。

American multinationals around the world are well managed, and they make a lot of profits where they’re located in the UK and France, in Ghana, in Thailand — wherever they are.

美国跨国公司在世界各地管理良好，无论在英国、法国、加纳、泰国——无论在哪里，它们都能赚取大量利润。

That’s helping keep the US economy afloat, that return profits.

这有助于保持美国经济的运转，从而带来利润。

I don’t see that as being related — transfer pricing and offshore tax manipulation.

我不认为这与转让定价和离岸税收操纵有关。

That is a factor, but I think American firms are primarily driven, actually, by better innovation and better management.

这是一个因素，但我认为美国公司实际上主要是由更好的创新和更好的管理驱动的。

So you’re right.

所以你是对的。

Paul David and Tim Bresnahan at Stanford, my colleagues, have had various .

我在斯坦福大学的同事保罗·大卫（Paul David）和蒂姆·布雷斯纳汉（Tim Bresnahan）有过各种各样的经历。

.

。

.

。

Again, there’s an old literature about general-purpose technologies, these technologies that change society, and at least two previous ones were the steam engine and the electric motor.

同样，有一本关于通用技术的古老文献，这些技术改变了社会，至少之前的两种技术是蒸汽机和电动机。

The big question is, why haven’t computers done that?

最大的问题是，为什么计算机没有做到这一点？

They seem as transformational as the previous two.

它们看起来和前两者一样具有变革性。

As we discussed, productivity growth rates in the US have been declining since the ’50s and don’t seem to have picked up much, anyway, with computers.

正如我们所讨论的，自 20 世纪 50 年代以来，美国的生产率增长率一直在下降，而且无论如何，对于计算机而言，生产率增长率似乎也没有太大提高。

I think the primary reason people argue for this is, you need to change society in order to exploit this.

我认为人们争论这一点的主要原因是，你需要改变社会才能利用这一点。

In fact, in an odd way, COVID, the pandemic, and working from home is one example of this — all the technology necessary for working from home.

事实上，以一种奇怪的方式，新冠疫情、流行病和在家工作就是其中一个例子 —— 所有在家工作所需的技术。

Just to be clear, the internet and email, cheap personal computers and video calls have all been around since the late 2000s.

需要明确的是，互联网和电子邮件、廉价个人电脑和视频通话自 2000 年代末以来就已经存在。

The last piece, Skype, came out in 2003.

最后一款产品 Skype 于 2003 年问世。

But it isn’t until the pandemic that we actually massively embraced working from home.

但直到疫情爆发，我们才真正大规模接受在家工作。

Why is that?

这是为什么？

I think it’s just social norms and firm organizational practices were slow to change.

我认为这只是社会规范和公司组织实践改变缓慢。

I think something holding back the impact of ICT is firms and society don’t change that rapidly.

我认为阻碍信息通信技术影响的因素是企业和社会变化不那么快。

A good example: Paul David mentions about electricity that when electricity came in — which I believe is in the 1910s, 1920s — factories were slow to adopt it.

一个很好的例子：Paul David 提到电力，当电力出现时（我相信是在 1910 年代、20 年代），工厂采用它的速度很慢。

The reason was, in the older factories where you had a big steam engine or even a waterwheel, it made sense to have the building very vertical.

原因是，在拥有大型蒸汽机甚至水车的旧工厂中，使建筑物非常垂直是有意义的。

You’d have four stories around this one central shaft, which belts would connect to, which drove all your mechanical power.

围绕这个中心轴有四层楼，皮带将连接到这些中心轴，从而驱动所有的机械动力。

With electricity, instead, you can have lots of little localized electric motors, which is a large flat building.

相反，有了电力，你就可以拥有许多小型本地电动机，这是一座大型扁平建筑。

That explains, if you look at really old-fashioned factories in the center of Manhattan and places where they were built 200 years ago, they’re very tall buildings.

这就解释了，如果你看看曼哈顿市中心的真正老式工厂以及 200 年前建造工厂的地方，你会发现它们都是非常高的建筑。

Modern factories are low-slung, massive sheds.

现代工厂都是低矮的、巨大的棚屋。

But of course, when electricity came in, it’s very hard to reshape all those buildings, and it takes decades.

但当然，当电力出现时，重塑所有这些建筑物非常困难，并且需要数十年的时间。

It’s kind of like that with reshaping the management, organizational structures of society.

这有点像重塑社会的管理和组织结构。

I think that’s one reason why it’s taken so long for IT to affect productivity.

我认为这就是 IT 花了这么长时间才影响生产力的原因之一。

Another thing for Italy — it’s even more so for Greece, actually — is that a lot of Southern Europe has suffered from a large negative brain drain.

对于意大利来说，另一件事——实际上对于希腊来说更是如此——很多南欧国家都遭受了严重的人才负流失。

I know lots of highly able Italians, but many of them I know are in the US and the UK, and they’ve left the country because of its poor economic prospects.

我认识很多非常有能力的意大利人，但我认识的许多人都在美国和英国，他们因为经济前景不佳而离开了这个国家。

Italy is almost a laundry list of what’s gone wrong and what not to do, but I think a lot of it comes down to poor government that then feeds through into all these policies that make it hard for firms to innovate.

意大利几乎是一张清单，列出了哪里出了问题，什么不该做，但我认为这很大程度上要归咎于糟糕的政府，而政府又会渗透到所有这些政策中，使企业难以创新。

Italy’s R&D performance isn’t great.

意大利的研发表现并不好。

It’s very uncertain.

这是非常不确定的。

It drives a lot of people abroad.

它带动了很多人出国。

The education system is poor.

教育体系很差。

On the value of management consultants

论管理顾问的价值

It is true on the negatives.

从负面来看也是如此。

To start with the negative side, the critique that’s often thrown at them is they tell you the obvious.

首先从消极的一面开始，经常对他们提出的批评是他们告诉你显而易见的事情。

They ask to borrow your watch and tell you the time.

他们要求借你的手表并告诉你时间。

Or they tell you things that the CEO normally knew, but she or he basically didn’t want to ’fess up to tell the workers.

或者他们告诉你首席执行官通常知道的事情，但她或他基本上不想“坦白告诉员工”。

Now, it’s true that I felt there was some element of that.

现在，我确实觉得其中有一些因素。

There was one project in particular that I was involved in.

我特别参与了一个项目。

I remember it seemed to us to be reasonably clear what to do.

我记得我们似乎很清楚该做什么。

I think it seemed to be reasonably clear to the division head what to do, but it was hard for her to tell the whole group.

我认为部门主管似乎很清楚该做什么，但她很难告诉整个团队。

McKinsey came in, the project was highly successful, the division improved dramatically, but it was, partly, we were there to bolster evidence.

麦肯锡进来了，该项目非常成功，该部门得到了显着改善，但部分原因是我们在那里支持证据。

The third element, I think, is generally useful, and I’ve seen this.

我认为第三个元素通常很有用，而且我已经看到了这一点。

When I think of the randomized controlled trial we did in India, where we hired Essentia to work in a number of firms, is a lot of management improvements aren’t that obvious to people on the ground.

当我想到我们在印度进行的随机对照试验时，我们聘请了 Essentia 在多家公司工作，我发现很多管理改进对于当地的人来说并不是那么明显。

Just to give you one example, dating back in history — after World War II, the big movement in the US was what’s called mass production.

举个例子，历史上 ——二战之后，美国的一大运动就是所谓的大规模生产。

Henry Ford had the production line, and the idea is you just scale up, get bigger and bigger and bigger and make more and more Fords and roll it off in a massive factory setup.

亨利·福特拥有生产线，其想法是扩大规模，变得越来越大，制造越来越多的福特汽车，然后在大型工厂中生产。

Toyota and the Japanese car manufacturing sector at that time in the 1950s — because they were obviously so devastated by the war — didn’t have access to capital and had to produce things on a small scale.

20 世纪 50 年代的丰田和日本汽车制造业——因为他们显然受到战争的严重破坏——无法获得资本，不得不进行小规模生产。

They went for an alternative system called lean.

他们选择了一种称为精益的替代系统。

The whole idea of lean is that you try and spot mistakes and immediately stop the line.

精益的整个理念是你尝试发现错误并立即停止生产线。

It’s very painful in the slow run.

慢跑的时候是非常痛苦的。

If you see a problem in the car, you stop it, you go through it, you figure out, and then you restart.

如果你发现汽车有问题，你会停下来，仔细检查，找出答案，然后重新启动。

It takes time to start off, and it’s a slow burn.

开始需要时间，而且是一个缓慢的过程。

By the 1980s, the Japanese car factories were clearly starting to dominate.

到了 20 世纪 80 年代，日本汽车工厂显然开始占据主导地位。

They had lower costs and higher quality.

他们的成本更低，质量更高。

In fact, there’s a great MIT book, called The Machine That Changed the World, that documents that.

事实上，麻省理工学院有一本很棒的书，名为《改变世界的机器》，记录了这一点。

Now, if you think of the way consultants were operating in the ’90s, 2000s, it isn’t obvious to many firms that lean was a far better way to run your factory, that you really want to introduce these Kaizen production processes, et cetera, and consultants come in and help you adopt them.

现在，如果你想想顾问在 20 世纪 90 年代、2000 年代的运作方式，你会发现，对于许多公司来说，精益是一种更好的工厂运营方式，你真的想引入这些 Kaizen 生产流程等等，而顾问却进来帮助你采用它们，这一点并不明显。

It’s not just factories.

不仅仅是工厂。

Healthcare — there’s been a huge transformation in lean health whereby when you go in and see a doctor, you really, really don’t want there to be process mistakes.

医疗保健 ——精益健康发生了巨大的转变，当你去看医生时，你真的、真的不希望出现流程错误。

Lean is actually very good at reducing quality defects and improving productivity.

精益实际上非常擅长减少质量缺陷和提高生产率。

That’s the area where consultants are great.

这就是顾问擅长的领域。

I remember when I was at McKinsey, and one of the projects I did with a retailer — we had someone that used to work at Toyota.

我记得当我在麦肯锡时，我与一家零售商合作的项目之一——我们有一个曾经在丰田工作过的人。

This Toyota guy had been there for three, four years and was just fantastic.

这个丰田人已经在那里呆了三四年了，非常棒。

He went around the retailer and said, “Here’s the kind of tools we use in Toyota, and just apply them.” And that was extremely valuable.

他绕遍了零售商并说：“这是我们在丰田使用的工具，只需应用它们即可。”这非常有价值。

That’s the positive side of managing consulting — highlighting things that maybe, ex post after the event, are obvious why it works, but in advance just aren’t.

这就是管理咨询的积极一面——强调那些在事后可能很明显为什么有效但事前却行不通的事情。

But the big constraint is processing cases through the courts.

但最大的限制是通过法院处理案件。

The courts are dramatically undersupplied in terms of judges, so what happens is, it’s very slow to process cases through court.

法院的法官严重不足，因此法院审理案件的速度非常缓慢。

As a result, when you talk to Indian firms, they are very skeptical of taking any issues through the court system.

因此，当你与印度公司交谈时，他们对通过法院系统解决任何问题都非常怀疑。

Just to be clear, if you’re in the US and you’re a manager and you discover somebody stealing stuff from you, you’re pretty likely to report it to the police.

需要明确的是，如果您在美国并且是一名经理，并且发现有人偷了您的东西，您很可能会向警方举报。

Then it goes to the court system.

然后它会进入法院系统。

That manager faces potential prison.

那位经理可能面临牢狱之灾。

They clearly lose their job.

他们显然失去了工作。

They have a big loss of career earnings, so in the first place, they probably won’t do it.

他们的职业收入损失惨重，所以首先，他们可能不会这样做。

In India, you can’t —

在印度，你不能 ——

The problem is, the legal environment is not great.

问题是，法律环境不太好。

Blackstone came in, a big PE firm, bought a large apparel manufacturer in India, and really struggled because, sure, they can improve management practices, but profit wasn’t going up.

黑石（Blackstone）是一家大型私募股权公司，它收购了印度的一家大型服装制造商，但确实陷入了困境，因为当然，他们可以改进管理实践，但利润却没有增加。

There was a lot of money, basically, illegally leaking out of the company.

基本上，有很多钱非法地从公司泄露出去。

Because the legal system is weak, it was hard to turn this around.

由于法律体系薄弱，很难扭转这一局面。

Then you’re right.

那你是对的。

The alternative is, look, even if private equity doesn’t come in, why can’t they do it organically?

另一种选择是，你看，即使私募股权不介入，为什么他们不能有机地介入呢？

And they are.

他们确实如此。

To be clear, management practices in India, which I know best, have been improving over time.

需要明确的是，我最了解的印度的管理实践随着时间的推移一直在改进。

There are some very successful Indian multinationals like Tata and .

印度有一些非常成功的跨国公司，如塔塔和 。

The issue is that it isn’t scaling.

问题是它无法扩展。

If you think of it, the frontier of management practice is improving every year.

如果你想一想，管理实践的前沿每年都在进步。

We’re getting better at managing firms in the US.

我们在管理美国公司方面做得越来越好。

Below that frontier, there are countries that are closest — say, Northern Europe — that are further — say, Southern Europe — and even further below— the developing world.

在该边界之下，有一些距离最近的国家——比如北欧——更远——比如南欧——甚至更远的是发展中国家。

They’re improving too.

他们也在进步。

It’s just there’s a big gap, and it takes time.

只是差距很大，而且需要时间。

It’s like innovation.

这就像创新。

It takes time to diffuse, and a better legal system would accelerate that.

扩散需要时间，而更好的法律体系将加速这一过程。

If you could have ruthless private equity backed by tough laws, I think it will be painful economically and socially, but the growth rate would improve because you’d have much more transfer of management practices.

如果你能拥有由严格法律支持的无情的私募股权，我认为这将在经济和社会上造成痛苦，但增长率会提高，因为你会有更多的管理实践转移。

Oh, we must have surveyed several million organizations by now to create a big dataset.

哦，我们现在肯定已经调查了数百万个组织才能创建一个大数据集。

We take populations of firms, run these surveys, collect data, and compare them.

我们对企业群体进行调查、收集数据并进行比较。

Most of the books that I read that are popular — Good to Great and Built to Last and things like these — are generally based on individual anecdotes and case studies, and I think that’s great for teaching.

我读过的大多数流行书籍——《从优秀到卓越》和《基业长青》之类的书籍通常都是基于个人轶事和案例研究，我认为这对教学很有帮助。

I use case studies in the Harvard Business School all the time to teach because it’s very inspirational.

我一直在哈佛商学院使用案例研究来教学，因为它非常鼓舞人心。

They’re always positive stories of how Mrs. X or Mr. Y turned the firm around, but they’re not great for research.

它们总是关于 X 女士或 Y 先生如何扭转公司局面的正面故事，但它们并不适合研究。

The reason is, I know from past experience, having to write one case study.

原因是，根据过去的经验，我必须写一个案例研究。

I wrote a case study on a firm that was owned by someone that was in my Stanford MBA course called Gokaldas, and it’s called The Challenge of Change.

我写了一篇关于一家公司的案例研究，该公司的所有者是我的斯坦福大学 MBA 课程的一位名叫 Gokaldas 的人，它的名字叫《变革的挑战》。

The problem was, we wrote this case study — it was a fascinating company that actually eventually got taken over by a private equity in India.

问题是，我们写了这个案例研究——这是一家令人着迷的公司，实际上最终被印度的一家私募股权公司收购。

They were a huge, very successful apparel firm.

他们是一家非常成功的大型服装公司。

We had to get legal sign-off from everyone involved.

我们必须得到所有相关人员的合法签字。

We interviewed six or seven people, and they all had to legally sign off and say they were fine with us using the material.

我们采访了六七个人，他们都必须合法签字并表示他们同意我们使用这些材料。

You can imagine what that does for selection effects.

你可以想象这对选择效果有什么影响。

It means that, basically, these books — it’s very hard for them to get proper information on firms that do badly because they refuse.

这意味着，基本上，这些书 ——他们很难获得有关因拒绝而表现不佳的公司的正确信息。

They threaten lawsuits.

他们威胁要提起诉讼。

I think a lot of management research is correct.

我认为很多管理研究都是正确的。

Most of these books are probably saying the right thing.

大多数这些书可能都说的是正确的事情。

The problem is that every story you want to come up with, every theory, there’s a book supporting it.

问题是你想提出的每一个故事、每一个理论，都有一本书支持它。

It’s kind of hard to know where to look.

很难知道该去哪里寻找。

What we really need, ideally, is what we’re trying to build.

理想情况下，我们真正需要的是我们正在努力构建的东西。

I wouldn’t say it’s our research, but more our data that, hopefully, people will use — because it’s publicly available data — to say, “Look, here are five hypotheses of management.

我不会说这是我们的研究，但更多的是我们的数据，希望人们会使用这些数据——因为它是公开可用的数据——来说，“看，这里有五个管理假设。

Is there support in large-scale data?” I think that will put more discipline on it and, therefore, put more credibility on these books.

有大规模数据支持吗？”我认为这会增加更多的纪律性，从而增加这些书的可信度。

I actually find these things quite useful.

我实际上发现这些东西非常有用。

I’m not sure I absorb most of the tips.

我不确定我是否吸收了大部分建议。

I don’t tend to listen to self-help podcasts, but I read a lot.

我不喜欢听自助播客，但我读了很多。

I read something — there may be 10 tips in there.

我读到一些东西 — 里面可能有10条提示。

In fact, before the podcast started, I was talking to Dallas, your producer.

事实上，在播客开始之前，我正在和你们的制作人达拉斯交谈。

She had sent me this whole list of things on what to do with your microphone and video.

她向我发送了关于如何处理麦克风和视频的完整清单。

I had read it all.

我已经全部读完了。

In fact, she included a link that I went onto.

事实上，她添加了我打开的链接。

I found a couple of them really useful.

我发现其中有几个非常有用。

I’d say 90 percent of them I’d seen, or maybe it wasn’t applicable, but 10 percent were great.

我想说其中 90% 是我见过的，或者可能不适用，但 10% 都很棒。

I actually think that, potentially, they are quite helpful.

我实际上认为它们可能很有帮助。

The issue is maybe on the evidence base.

问题可能在于证据基础上。

Again, as an economist, ideally, you’d have an RCT.

再说一次，作为一名经济学家，理想情况下，你应该有一个随机对照试验。

How you’d execute it is not obvious, but you may take a thousand Americans or a thousand Spaniards or something, some sample, and then give 500 of them intensive self-help coaching for a month and see what happens.

如何执行尚不明显，但你可能会采取 1000 名美国人或 1000 名西班牙人之类的样本，然后对其中 500 人进行为期一个月的强化自助辅导，看看会发生什么。

Quite possibly, somebody’s done this.

很可能有人已经这么做了。

It may exist, but that would be my way to evaluate these kinds of interventions.

它可能存在，但这将是我评估此类干预措施的方式。

But that strikes me as counterintuitive.

但这让我觉得违反直觉。

I see people screwing up all the time, not realizing their potential.

我看到人们总是搞砸，却没有意识到自己的潜力。

I think the market for talent is remarkably inefficient and that people don’t do their very best.

我认为人才市场的效率非常低下，人们没有尽力而为。

Again, as a personal anecdote, I was recently given an energy efficiency.

再次，作为个人轶事，我最近获得了能源效率。

My brother came around a couple of years ago and pointed out, I should be using LED bulbs throughout the entire house rather than the old halogen or CFL fluorescent ones.

几年前，我的兄弟过来指出，我应该在整个房子里使用 LED 灯泡，而不是旧的卤素灯或 CFL 荧光灯。

My brother’s an engineer, and I sat down and went through the numbers, and it paid off within two to three years.

我哥哥是一名工程师，我坐下来仔细研究了这些数字，并在两到三年内得到了回报。

That’s clearly a fantastic rate of return.

这显然是一个非常好的回报率。

That’s pretty rapid.

这非常快。

I switched every single bulb in my house to LED.

我把家里的每个灯泡都换成了 LED 灯泡。

But I didn’t know it until someone had pointed it out.

但直到有人指出我才知道。

Ex post, it seems kind of obvious.

事后看来，这似乎是显而易见的。

I could have easily gone to Amazon and worked out the cost of it, worked the electricity uses and done the calculation.

我可以轻松地去亚马逊计算成本、了解用电量并进行计算。

I just never thought of it.

我只是从来没有想过。

A lot of this is like Dallas’s recommendations.

其中很多都类似于达拉斯的建议。

She said, using this microphone, turn the gain thing down to zero.

她说，使用这个麦克风，将增益调低至零。

I didn’t realize that.

我没有意识到这一点。

There was a knob at the back of the microphone I’d never even looked at.

麦克风背面有一个旋钮，我从来没有看过。

I then looked at it.

然后我看了看。

And, “Oh yeah, there is that.” Turned it down to zero and, hopefully, it sounds okay.

并且，“哦，是的，就是这样。”把它调到零，希望听起来不错。

Honestly, you see this in firms all the time, and when we were out in India or when I was in McKinsey, you’d often give pieces of advice, and ex post, it was really useful.

老实说，你在公司里经常看到这种情况，当我们在印度或我在麦肯锡工作时，你经常会给出一些建议，事后，这确实很有用。

For example, as another concrete piece of analysis, when I was out in India, a big issue in a lot of modern management is quality defects.

比如说，再具体分析一下，我在印度的时候，很多现代管理的一个大问题就是质量缺陷。

These companies were large companies making, say, fabric, that goes into making shirts and trousers and upholstery coverings.

这些公司都是大公司，生产布料，用于制造衬衫、裤子和室内装饰。

A lot of the learnings coming out originally from Japan is, you should zero in on quality defects and fix them instantly.

许多最初来自日本的经验是，您应该将质量缺陷归零并立即修复。

Essentially, I said, “Look, your factory of a hundred looms — we’re going to take six looms at the back row and have a quality defect index and have a quality control process, a Kaizen process.”

本质上，我说，“看，你的工厂有一百台织机 —— 我们将在后排放置六台织机，并有质量缺陷指数和质量控制流程，即改善流程。”

After two to four weeks, it was so effective in spotting repeated issues that the factory owner said, “This is great.

两到四个星期后，它在发现重复问题方面非常有效，工厂老板说：“这太棒了。

It’s worth the effort setting up this QDI index and this committee.

建立这个 QDI 指数和这个委员会是值得的。

We’re just going to roll it out to the whole factory.” But in advance, they were skeptical.

我们将把它推广到整个工厂。”但事先，他们对此表示怀疑。

I think that — as with so many things in life, unfortunately — we just don’t know what we don’t know, and so we’re skeptical on advice.

我认为，不幸的是，就像生活中的许多事情一样，我们只是不知道我们不知道什么，所以我们对建议持怀疑态度。

More recently, they’re pretty good.

最近，他们的表现还不错。

I have to say, manufacturing — a lot of what drives good management practices is being large, being around for a while, being open to competition, and having educated employees.

我不得不说，制造业——推动良好管理实践的许多因素是规模大、存在时间长、开放竞争以及拥有受过教育的员工。

And China has those inputs.

中国有这些投入。

A lot of their manufacturing firms, in particular, are big.

尤其是他们的许多制造公司规模都很大。

They’re competing ferociously with other companies.

他们正在与其他公司激烈竞争。

Actually, Chinese education system is churning out vast numbers of engineers, and they’ve been operating for quite a while.

事实上，中国的教育体系正在培养大量的工程师，而且他们已经运行了很长一段时间。

I suspect at this point now, Chinese manufacturing management is pretty good, actually.

我现在怀疑中国的制造管理其实还是不错的。

It’s harder to tell in other sectors, particularly those that are not internationally comparable.

其他行业的情况就更难说了，尤其是那些没有国际可比性的行业。

Their financial services — who knows as much?

他们的金融服务 ——谁知道得那么多？

That’s harder to evaluate.

那就更难评价了。

Typically, if you want to look for well-run companies, it’s size, high levels of competition, open to trade, educated employees, no family firms where it’s handed down by primogeniture — the eldest son inherits it.

一般来说，如果你想寻找经营良好的公司，它的规模、竞争水平高、贸易开放、员工受过教育，没有通过长子继承权传承下来的家族企业——长子继承它。

If you go into the sectors that don’t have these issues, then you tend to see very good management.

如果你进入不存在这些问题的行业，那么你往往会看到非常好的管理。

In China, typically, tick most of those boxes in manufacturing.

在中国，通常在制造业中勾选大部分选项。

Since you emphasize trust and corruption and ability to delegate authority without too many bureaucratic checks and balances, ex ante, China seemed bad on all those things.

既然你强调信任、腐败以及在没有太多官僚制衡的情况下下放权力的能力，那么事前，中国在所有这些事情上似乎都很糟糕。

Yet Chinese big business has done pretty phenomenally well.

然而，中国的大企业却表现得相当出色。

If you, Tyler Cowen, set up a company and give me a contract for three years for providing ball bearings, I’m going to go and put a bit of money into R&D in improving and set up a process.

如果你泰勒·考恩（Tyler Cowen）成立一家公司并给我一份为期三年的提供滚珠轴承的合同，我将投入一些资金进行研发以改进并建立流程。

If you then say after six months, “I’ve changed my mind.

如果六个月后你说：“我改变了主意。

Can I sue you and get the money back?

我可以起诉你并要回钱吗？

If I can effectively do it through the court system, I can trust you.” That’s maybe a kind of odd concept of trust.

如果我能通过法庭系统有效地做到这一点，我就可以信任你。”这可能是一种奇怪的信任概念。

It’s not based in some cultural, religious thing.

它不是基于某种文化、宗教的东西。

It’s based on the fact that the legal system works.

这是基于法律体系运作的事实。

If you look in, for example, the World Value Survey, which measures interpersonal trust, trust measured there is highly correlated with effectiveness of the legal system.

例如，如果你查看衡量人际信任的世界价值调查，就会发现那里衡量的信任与法律体系的有效性高度相关。

Some of the lowest countries in the world, in terms of trust, are some of the African countries whereby the legal system’s in chaos because they’re undergoing civil war, and the highest countries are like Norway, Sweden, North America.

世界上信任度最低的国家是一些因内战而法律体系混乱的非洲国家，而信任度最高的国家是挪威、瑞典和北美。

Currently in China, the rule of law as applied to commercial contracts, I think, is reasonable.

目前在中国，商业合同实行法治，我认为是合理的。

I am not an expert, but you don’t hear endless stories of scandals and corruption, at least as commercial contracts go.

我不是专家，但你不会听到无尽的丑闻和腐败故事，至少在商业合同方面是这样。

I think that’s what enables these large firms to grow.

我认为这就是这些大公司能够成长的原因。

When we’ve collected survey evidence in reverse, we definitely don’t hear endless stories of managers ripping off firms and stealing ideas, which is a big problem.

当我们反向收集调查证据时，我们绝对不会听到无数经理人欺骗公司和窃取创意的故事，这是一个大问题。

Just to reverse it around, what happens in countries with very weak legal systems where you can’t trust anyone is, you hire your family members.

只是为了扭转局面，在法律体系非常薄弱的国家，你不能信任任何人，你会雇佣你的家庭成员。

If I want to set up a company and I can’t trust any outsiders, I start to stuff it full of sons, daughters, brothers, brothers-in-law, sisters, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, et cetera.

如果我想开一家公司，我不能相信任何外人，我就开始在里面塞满儿子、女儿、兄弟、姐夫、姐妹、嫂子、阿姨、叔叔等等。

Now, that’s good because I can trust them, but the problem is, these people aren’t naturally the best managers to run the place.

现在，这很好，因为我可以信任他们，但问题是，这些人天生并不是管理这个地方的最佳管理者。

Of course, as I get bigger and bigger, I’m running out of good family members.

当然，随着我变得越来越大，我的好家庭成员也越来越少了。

Do I appoint a second cousin, or that pretty incompetent youngest son of mine?

我要任命一个远房表弟，还是我那个相当无能的小儿子？

You can imagine the tradeoffs that are going on, but it means that, unless you have a proper legal system which generates trust, it’s very hard to grow large firms without professional managers.

你可以想象正在发生的权衡，但这意味着，除非你有一个能够产生信任的适当的法律体系，否则在没有职业经理人的情况下很难发展大公司。

On Scottish management

论苏格兰管理

My mother-in-law who’s in Glasgow — I should send her this podcast.

我在格拉斯哥的岳母 — 我应该向她发送这个播客。

She will probably kill me for saying that.

她可能会因为我这么说而杀了我。

The Scots, I should point out, have had some of the most successful members of the British government, like Gordon Brown and various prime ministers.

我应该指出，苏格兰拥有英国政府中一些最成功的成员，例如戈登·布朗和多位首相。

They’re overrepresented.

他们的比例过高。

I don’t think they’re very different.

我不认为它们有什么不同。

I think, in fact, in reverse — they’re really pretty similar.

我认为，事实上，反过来 ——它们真的非常相似。

Scotland voted against Brexit quite resoundingly, and it’s true that they’ve handled the pandemic much better.

苏格兰强烈反对英国脱欧，而且他们确实更好地应对了这一流行病。

Why that is, is not clear.

为什么会这样，尚不清楚。

I regularly talk to my mother-in-law in Scotland.

我经常和我在苏格兰的婆婆聊天。

In some ways, they seem to be more educated, at least as far as I’d say in the way they vote.

在某些方面，他们似乎受过更多教育，至少就我而言，从他们投票的方式来看是这样。

Their OECD-measured levels of education are not higher.

他们的经合组织衡量的教育水平并不高。

I’m not aware of any other striking differences.

我不知道有任何其他显着差异。

I like Nicola Sturgeon, who is, I think what’s called the first minister.

我喜欢尼古拉·斯特金，我认为他是所谓的首席部长。

She’s effectively the prime minister of Scotland.

她实际上是苏格兰首相。

She’s done a very good job.

她做得很好。

She locked down faster in Scotland.

她在苏格兰封锁得更快。

I think that’s why they dealt with the pandemic sooner.

我认为这就是他们更快应对疫情的原因。

Again, on the pandemic, I’m not enough up in the news on England versus Scotland, living in the US, to give more of an answer, but I am aware the Scots have done better on that.

再说一次，关于大流行，我对生活在美国的英格兰与苏格兰的新闻报道还不够多，无法给出更多答案，但我知道苏格兰在这方面做得更好。

And they certainly did better on Brexit.

他们在英国脱欧问题上确实做得更好。

But as far as I’m aware, no.

但据我所知，没有。

The interesting thing, by the way, on technology — one of the issues that afflicted the UK was hooliganism.

顺便说一句，有趣的是，在技术方面——困扰英国的问题之一就是流氓行为。

There’s various elements of it.

其中有各种各样的要素。

One was just fighting and violence, but another one is racism, and in both of them, technology has been fantastic at combating.

一种是战斗和暴力，另一种是种族主义，而在这两种情况下，技术在打击方面都表现出色。

On both of them — cameras in the grounds, ID cards, online.

他们俩身上都有——地面上的摄像头、身份证、在线摄像头。

There was an incident just over the weekend — I was looking just this morning — about the racial comments made against a Crystal Palace football player that the police checked through online, and turned out to be a 12-year-old boy in the West Midlands making this stuff.

周末发生了一起事件——“我今天早上正在看”——关于针对一名水晶宫足球运动员的种族言论，警方在网上查了一下，结果发现是西米德兰兹郡的一名 12 岁男孩制作了这种东西。

Just in terms of the ground, technology’s improved attendance at sports games.

仅就场地而言，技术提高了体育比赛的上座率。

Because of this, we can stamp it out.

正因为如此，我们可以将其消灭。

That’s something that doesn’t show up in productivity figures.

这并没有体现在生产率数据中。

Another concern you could have — and is being a big debate in terms of productivity — is the case of the quality of life has risen in ways that we’re not measuring.

您可能担心的另一个问题是，生活质量的提高是我们无法衡量的，而这在生产力方面正在引起一场大辩论。

I could get into that, but I think the answer is, primarily, no. You could make that claim, and hooliganism has been pushed back a lot by technology.

我可以讨论这个问题，但我认为答案主要是否定的。你可以这么说，而流氓行为已经被技术击退了很多。

One thing that aided growth on the Trump was the corporate tax cuts.

帮助特朗普经济增长的一件事是企业减税。

There’s another political uncertainty in changing his mind all the time.

他不断改变主意还有另一个政治不确定性。

Honestly, a lot of bad policy with reduced growth on the Trump.

老实说，特朗普的很多糟糕政策都导致经济增长放缓。

It seems to have netted out to about zero.

它的净值似乎已经为零。

It was no higher or no lower than in Obama’s second term.

它不高于也不低于奥巴马第二任期。

The policy uncertainty was a negative, but there were other things he did that were positive.

政策的不确定性是负面的，但他所做的其他事情也是积极的。

It is also true that under Obama, there was considerable policy uncertainty because of things like the debt ceiling debate and the fiscal cliff.

确实，在奥巴马领导下，由于债务上限争论和财政悬崖等问题，存在相当大的政策不确定性。

Who you blame is less obvious there.

你责备的人在那里不太明显。

Congress was fighting the president.

国会正在与总统作斗争。

Obama wanted to pass various pieces of legislation and couldn’t.

奥巴马想通过多项立法但未能通过。

The same thing is true now, of course.

当然，现在也是同样的情况。

We have mixed control of Congress.

我们对国会的控制是混合的。

I think Trump made it a lot worse, to fault him quite explicitly.

我认为特朗普让事情变得更糟，明确地指责他。

He just changed his mind, and he also didn’t listen to advisers.

他只是改变了主意，而且他也没有听顾问的意见。

When he talked to firms, it’s very hard to predict which way a policy was going to go, because a lot of decisions didn’t seem entirely thought out, rational, predictable — I don’t know what words you’d use.

当他与企业交谈时，很难预测政策将走向何方，因为很多决定似乎并不是经过深思熟虑、理性的、可预测的 —— 我不知道你会用什么词。

Firms who complain about, “We didn’t see this coming.” He changed his mind and the tweets.

抱怨“我们没有预见到这种情况发生”的公司。他改变了主意，也改变了推文。

By the way, US physical investment, even before COVID, was not great.

顺便说一句，即使在新冠疫情爆发之前，美国的实物投资也并不是很好。

Just on data, the ’60s, in terms of stock market volatility, were quite low.

仅从数据来看，上世纪 60 年代的股市波动性相当低。

In terms of macro volatility, were moderately low.

从宏观波动来看，处于适度低位。

There was the whole Great Moderation, and the ’70s and ’80s were very volatile macro growth, but the ’60s were reasonably calm.

整个大稳健时期，70 年代和 80 年代的宏观增长非常不稳定，但 60 年代相当平静。

In terms of our index, Economic Policy Uncertainty Index, where we scraped newspapers, it didn’t appear to be particularly high levels of uncertainty.

就我们的指数（经济政策不确定性指数）而言，我们从报纸上抓取的数据显示，不确定性似乎并不是特别高。

You could argue newspapers in that era — it wasn’t clear how completely open they were.

你可能会争论那个时代的报纸——“目前还不清楚它们有多完全开放。”

Watergate was opening the floodgates of being more transparent.

水门事件打开了更加透明的闸门。

But I don’t see in the evidence I’ve seen of the ’60s as a period of particularly high policy uncertainty.

但在我所看到的证据中，我并不认为 60 年代是一个政策不确定性特别高的时期。

You’re right, those incidents happened, but in other areas, like domestic economic policy — again, I’m going off newspapers and stock market reactions — it doesn’t seem to be particularly high.

你是对的，这些事件确实发生了，但在其他领域，比如国内经济政策 ——我再次从报纸和股市反应中走出来——似乎并不是特别高。

The two great spikes in the stock market volatility by the end of the ’60s were the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of JFK.

20 世纪 60 年代末，股市波动的两次高峰是古巴导弹危机和肯尼迪遇刺事件。

On how long working from home can work

在家工作可以持续多久

For those of us that can work from home, the evidence looks like, in the short run, that increases productivity, as long as you’ve got reasonable conditions, like proper internet and a room, your own exclusive room to work in.

对于我们这些可以在家工作的人来说，有证据表明，从短期来看，只要你有合理的条件，比如适当的互联网和一个房间，你自己的专属工作房间，就可以提高生产力。

I had an old paper looking at China, and it showed very large increases in workers’ short-run productivity from people working in call centers.

我有一篇关于中国的旧论文，它显示呼叫中心工作人员的短期生产率大幅提高。

The big unknown I’m working in — I know other people are looking at this too — which is, what’s the impact on longer-run productivity, which is the concept — coming back to the beginning of the podcast — about creation and innovation.

我正在研究的一个巨大的未知领域 ——我知道其他人也在关注这个问题 ——这对长期生产力有什么影响，这就是概念 —— 回到播客的开头 ——关于创造和创新。

Lots of claims, including Steve Jobs, before he passed away, made several comments about he wanted people to be in the office.

许多人，包括史蒂夫·乔布斯，在他去世前都发表了一些关于他希望人们留在办公室的评论。

You have to be there for the new ideas that come up from water-cooler discussions and meetings and one-on-one stuff.

你必须参与从饮水机讨论、会议和一对一的活动中产生的新想法。

Obviously, under COVID, that’s all stalled.

显然，在新冠肺炎疫情下，这一切都陷入了停滞。

None of that we’re really sharp right now.

我们现在对这些都不是很敏锐。

You can get away with three to six, maybe even nine months, probably, of not radically creating new things.

你可以在三到六个月，甚至九个月内不从根本上创造新事物。

But in the long run, I fear there’d be a drop in, say, patenting in 2021, 2022 because of this.

但从长远来看，我担心 2021 年、2022 年的专利申请量会因此而下降。

The question is how firms just run.

问题是企业如何运营。

My guess, from talking to a lot of US companies, is they will return partly to the office.

根据与许多美国公司的交谈，我猜测他们将部分返回办公室。

I think in the long run, working from home will be fine because we’ll be in the office three days a week and two days a week at home.

我认为从长远来看，在家工作会很好，因为我们每周三天在办公室，每周在家工作两天。

That’s the best of both worlds.

这是两全其美的。

I don’t think you need to be in the office five days a week to be creative, but you do need some time each week with colleagues.

我认为你不需要每周在办公室呆五天才能发挥创造力，但你每周确实需要一些时间与同事在一起。

I’m not too worried now.

我现在不太担心了。

What I think will be problematic is, if in late 2021, we’re still all 100 percent working from home.

我认为问题是，如果到 2021 年末，我们仍然 100% 在家工作。

Then I would really worry about impacts and productivity.

然后我真的会担心影响和生产力。

That’s the kind of thing that generates, for me, coauthors — talking to someone of a quirky idea that comes up with something.

对我来说，这种事情会产生合著者——与某人谈论一个奇怪的想法，从而提出一些东西。

Oddly enough, most of my coauthors are not at Stanford, which seems to disobey my own rule.

奇怪的是，我的大多数合著者都不在斯坦福大学，这似乎违反了我自己的规则。

I don’t know why that is.

我不知道为什么会这样。

Mostly I have overlap with them physically at one point or another — they’re former students or former colleagues, like when I was at UCL or LSE.

大多数情况下，我在某些方面与他们有重叠——他们是以前的学生或以前的同事，就像我在伦敦大学学院或伦敦政治经济学院时一样。

Steve Davis, I’ve worked with a lot in Chicago.

史蒂夫·戴维斯，我在芝加哥和很多人一起工作过。

I never physically overlapped with him.

我从来没有和他有过身体上的重叠。

Two others are Ivan Alfaro, Xiaoji Lin — I met them at Ohio State University.

另外两个人是伊万·阿尔法罗（Ivan Alfaro）和林晓吉（Xiaoji Lin）——我在俄亥俄州立大学认识了他们。

It is harder —

更难 —

My thought is, and it kind of matches roughly what a lot of Silicon Valley types say, is the initial spark or idea is much more effectively generated in person.

我的想法是，这与许多硅谷人士所说的大致相符，即最初的火花或想法更有效地由个人产生。

Often, it’s over lunch or over coffee.

通常，是在午餐或喝咖啡时。

This is the sense in which productivity now .

这就是现在生产力的意义。

.

。

.

。

I’ve been running masses of surveys on working from home to try and get the sense of how people are feeling, and both firms and workers are overwhelmingly positive about working from home.

我一直在对在家工作进行大量调查，试图了解人们的感受，公司和员工都对在家工作持极其积极的态度。

Now, again, to be clear, that’s July, and we’re three to four months into the lockdown.

现在，再次澄清一下，那是七月，我们已经进入封锁三到四个月了。

My theory is, if it were full-time working from home five days a week for another six to nine months, there’s going to be much more discontentment.

我的理论是，如果接下来六到九个月每周全职在家工作五天，就会有更多的不满。

In fact, I saw that in China when we did the Ctrip study.

事实上，我在中国做携程研究时就看到了这一点。

People were working from home for nine months.

人们在家工作了九个月。

Towards the end of it, it started to really grind and drag on.

接近尾声时，它开始真正磨砺和拖延。

That was more about loneliness, but the other issue is in terms of being productive and being creative.

这更多的是关于孤独，但另一个问题是生产力和创造力。

On the Nick Bloom production function

关于尼克·布鲁姆生产函数

At the time I was at UCL — I was doing my PhD in the late ’90s — the number of other PhD students was very thin.

当时我在伦敦大学学院（UCL）——90 年代末我正在攻读博士学位——其他博士生的数量非常少。

It wasn’t a big program.

这不是一个大计划。

Mostly there’s a mix.

大多数情况下都是混合的。

Many of them are not interested in ultimately going into academia.

他们中的许多人对最终进入学术界不感兴趣。

I was one of the few students that was focused.

我是少数几个专注的学生之一。

There were a few others, don’t get me wrong.

还有其他一些，请不要误会我的意思。

There were about five or six in my year, but it was a much smaller cohort, say, compared to Stanford, where there’s 25 a year.

我那一年大约有五六个人，但与斯坦福大学一年 25 人相比，这个群体要小得多。

As a result, it was much easier for me to work with faculty.

结果，我与教师的合作变得更加容易。

Not just faculty at UCL, but others through the IFS.

不仅是伦敦大学学院的教师，还有 IFS 的其他教师。

People like Richard Blundell, John Van Reenen and Rachel Griffiths, Frank Windmeijer, Steve Bond.

像理查德·布伦德尔、约翰·范·雷宁、雷切尔·格里菲斯、弗兰克·温德梅杰、史蒂夫·邦德这样的人。

These guys were sitting around.

这些家伙围坐在一起。

Lucy Chennells — I remember she was sitting right on the other side of the desk from me.

露西·陈内尔斯（Lucy Chennells）——我记得她就坐在我桌子的另一边。

I’d speak to Lucy as a grad student.

作为一名研究生，我会和露西交谈。

It’s fantastic.

太棒了。

This was something that had been out with Rachel for 5, 10 years.

这是 Rachel 已经坚持了 5、10 年的事情了。

Having that exposure is great.

拥有这样的曝光度真是太好了。

If I’d been in an enormous cohort of 25 of us per year, over six years, I never would’ve got that.

如果我每年都加入一个由 25 个人组成的庞大团队，持续六年，我永远也不会得到这样的结果。

For me, almost certainly, I was better off having gone to UCL.

对我来说，几乎可以肯定的是，去伦敦大学学院会更好。

It was a fantastic outcome for me versus anywhere else because I got to work with these people early on.

与其他任何人相比，这对我来说是一个非常棒的结果，因为我很早就与这些人一起工作了。

I also have to say I’m very lucky because the IFS in that era was big into what they called micro econometrics, which is basically using panel data, which turned out to be exactly the way to go.

我还必须说我很幸运，因为那个时代的 IFS 非常关注他们所谓的微观计量经济学，它基本上使用面板数据，结果证明这正是正确的方法。

So I was clearly fortunate.

所以我显然很幸运。

I just happened to be in a university when it was on the rise at the time.

我刚好在大学，当时大学正在兴起。

One is, it really inspired me to get interested in economics.

一是，它确实激发了我对经济学的兴趣。

They answered what I would call pub economics questions.

他们回答了我所说的酒吧经济学问题。

What I mean is, in the British sense, there are questions you can talk to your friends in the pub about, which are the same ones, frankly, the New York Times or anyone .

我的意思是，从英国人的角度来看，有些问题你可以在酒吧里和你的朋友讨论，坦率地说，这些问题与《纽约时报》或任何人都是一样的。

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They’re not abstruse things like, “What happens in this model when alpha goes to seven,” but more like, “How would you increase growth rates?”

它们并不是诸如“当 alpha 达到 7 时该模型中会发生什么”之类的深奥问题，而更像是“您将如何提高增长率？”

The IFS was very much about inspiring me to do this stuff, and it’s also entirely empirically focused.

IFS 很大程度上是为了激励我去做这些事情，而且它也完全注重经验。

Again, that was in an era when empirical economics wasn’t so dominant.

再说一遍，那是一个经验经济学还没有那么占主导地位的时代。

It is much more dominant now.

现在它更具统治力。

So, I just basically focused on data.

所以，我基本上只关注数据。

And I was lucky at the IFS — I could do a part-time PhD.

我很幸运在 IFS ——我可以攻读兼职博士学位。

Just to be clear, when I started that, I was not a PhD student.

需要澄清的是，当我开始这样做时，我还不是一名博士生。

They had a program encouraging people to go do part-time PhDs at UCL.

他们有一个计划鼓励人们去伦敦大学学院兼职攻读博士学位。

I then went to start my PhD about nine months after joining the IFS at UCL.

加入伦敦大学学院 IFS 大约九个月后，我开始攻读博士学位。

I was, oddly, an accidental PhD student.

奇怪的是，我偶然成为一名博士生。

It was not something I ever had in mind.

我从来没有想过这件事。

Then I started working in two areas.

然后我开始在两个领域工作。

One was management.

一是管理。

One was uncertainty.

一是不确定性。

The management one turned out to be a fertile area to look in just because there’s not much data.

事实证明，管理领域是一个值得研究的沃土，因为数据不多。

Uncertainty — I honestly was, again, fortunate on timing because when I started to look in it, it was during the period of the Great Moderation.

不确定性 ——老实说，我再次在时机上很幸运，因为当我开始研究它时，正值大稳健时期。

When I was working in uncertainty, I was looking at things like 9/11 as an enormous uncertainty shock, started to get into the topic.

当我在不确定性中工作时，我将 9/11 之类的事情视为巨大的不确定性冲击，开始进入这个话题。

Business cycles were kind of quiet, people weren’t working on that that much.

商业周期有点安静，人们没有做那么多工作。

Then suddenly of course, ’08, ’09 happened and then COVID.

当然，突然之间，‘08’、’09发生了，然后是新冠疫情。

In hindsight, I wouldn’t advise that path.

事后看来，我不建议走这条路。

The issue is, it’s like first and second orders of the stochastic dominance.

问题是，这就像随机主导的一阶和二阶。

On average, the path I took was probably a less good path to take.

平均而言，我走的路可能不太好走。

It turned out, for me individually — due to circumstance and good luck, it worked out well.

事实证明，对我个人而言 ——由于环境和运气，效果很好。

Bob and I and many others have worked in it.

鲍勃和我以及其他许多人都曾参与其中。

I realized halfway through my PhD, it was hard to excite other people about adjustment costs.

我在攻读博士学位的过程中意识到，很难让其他人对调整成本感到兴奋。

I honestly stopped talking to people.

老实说，我不再和人说话了。

Again, coming back to the public economics thing.

再次回到公共经济学的话题。

My friends in particular — their eyelids would start drooping.

尤其是我的朋友们——他们的眼皮会开始下垂。

I was just boring them to tears.

我只是让他们无聊得流泪。

That’s how I ended up morphing to looking at uncertainty.

这就是我最终转向关注不确定性的原因。

I realized if you have high adjustment costs — as in, it’s expensive to hire someone and fire, invest and disinvest — uncertainty is really costly because you can’t change your mind.

我意识到，如果你的调整成本很高——比如，雇用某人、解雇、投资和撤资的成本都很高——那么不确定性的成本确实很高，因为你无法改变主意。

But yeah, it has colored my thinking a lot.

但是，是的，它给我的想法带来了很多色彩。

I was thinking about working from home.

我正在考虑在家工作。

Just to be clear, under COVID, with social distancing, working from home, I think this is going to last for another, let’s say a year.

需要明确的是，在新冠疫情下，由于社交距离、在家工作，我认为这种情况将持续一段时间，比如说一年。

It’s hard to know.

很难知道。

If, after a year or more, we are still social distancing and working from home, we’ve been in that regime for up to 18 months.

如果一年或更长时间后，我们仍然保持社交距离并在家工作，那么我们已经处于这种状态长达 18 个月了。

A lot of firms are going to have adjusted individuals to that process.

许多公司将根据这一流程调整个人。

You can call it inertia.

你可以称之为惯性。

You’d also think of it as adjustment costs, but this is why I think a lot of what’s happening now is going to stick, because of that.

你也会将其视为调整成本，但这就是为什么我认为现在发生的很多事情将会持续下去，正因为如此。

Yes, and in some senses, that has colored my thinking.

是的，从某种意义上说，这改变了我的想法。

I don’t know how long ago it was; I had a summer internship, an unpaid internship — there’s a ministry long gone in the UK called the Department of Trade and Industry — to do a project looking at patents.

我不知道那是多久以前的事了；我参加了暑期实习，一次无薪实习——英国有一个早已不复存在的部门，叫做贸易和工业部——来做一个有关专利的项目。

This is 30 years ago.

这是30年前的事了。

I remember putting up all the data on patents and that kind of interest in innovation stuff.

我记得把所有的专利数据和对创新的兴趣放在一起。

I tend to think I’ve built up so much knowledge and interest in, particularly, management and uncertainty and innovation, I tend to mostly focus on that.

我倾向于认为我已经积累了很多知识和兴趣，特别是在管理、不确定性和创新方面，我倾向于主要关注这一点。

Although recently, through fortuitous luck, I was working with another couple of coauthors — again, I’ve never overlapped with Faith Guvenen and Sergio Salgado — looking at inequality and firms and skewness and other topics.

尽管最近，由于偶然的运气，我正在与另外几位合著者合作——再次强调，我从未与 Faith Guvenen 和 Sergio Salgado 重叠——研究不平等、公司、偏度和其他主题。

For me, I really like to read broadly rather than deeply — sounds an odd thing to say.

对我来说，我真的喜欢广泛阅读而不是深入阅读——这听起来很奇怪。

Every Monday, for example, or Sunday night, the National Bureau of Economic Research has this vast email of all the recent papers.

例如，每周一或周日晚上，国家经济研究局都会收到包含所有最新论文的大量电子邮件。

I tend to try and scan every title and abstract.

我倾向于尝试浏览每个标题和摘要。

I read the papers.

我读了报纸。

I like the Economist magazine.

我喜欢《经济学人》杂志。

It’s good.

很好。

It’s often been a source of ideas, actually.

事实上，它常常是想法的来源。

We were talking before the call — I listen to your podcast.

我们在通话前交谈 — 我听你的播客。

I actually listen to a lot of podcasts because I try and go out for a walk or a run for about an hour every day.

实际上我听了很多播客，因为我每天尝试出去散步或跑步大约一个小时。

I mostly listen to podcasts.

我主要听播客。

If I’m getting too tired, I have to switch to music.

如果我太累了，我就必须切换到音乐。

For me, that’s been helpful for coming up with new research ideas.

对我来说，这对于提出新的研究想法很有帮助。

Often, I’m giving a seminar.

我经常举办研讨会。

A lot of great ideas come from .

许多伟大的想法都来自。

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For those who don’t go on the academic seminar, the way that academic seminars work is — because at GMU, not long ago — you go and give a talk, and then normally you get meetings in the morning and the afternoon.

对于那些不参加学术研讨会的人来说，学术研讨会的运作方式是 —— 因为不久前在GMU —— 你去演讲，然后通常是上午和下午开会。

A classic day will be, you turn up at 10:00 AM.

经典的一天是，您在上午 10:00 到达。

You have half-hour meetings and then lunch, and there’s a talk in the afternoon and then dinner.

你们有半小时的会议，然后吃午饭，下午有一次演讲，然后吃晚饭。

What I really like is those one-on-one meetings because you’re talking to lots of people for half an hour.

我真正喜欢的是那些一对一的会议，因为你要与很多人交谈半个小时。

I find them fundamentally really tiring because you’re fully on.

我发现他们从根本上来说真的很累，因为你全力以赴。

Actually, whenever I meet people, I go to their website, look them up for half an hour, 20 minutes beforehand, and really try and learn about what they work on.

事实上，每当我遇到人时，我都会访问他们的网站，提前半小时、20 分钟查找他们，并真正尝试了解他们的工作。

It takes a lot of time, but I find it really valuable.

这需要很多时间，但我觉得它非常有价值。

That’s the great source of ideas.

这是想法的重要来源。

I’m personally also suffering in the sense of productivity — as I mentioned, I think the US economy is — from working at home full time because those one-on-one meetings have stopped.

我个人也在生产力方面受到影响——正如我所提到的，我认为美国经济因全职在家工作而受到影响，因为那些一对一的会议已经停止了。

My own production function, in some ways, of continuing current projects is fine.

在某些方面，我自己的生产函数继续当前的项目是很好的。

I can do that.

我能做到。

But I do feel that if this carries on for another year, the US economy is going to suffer a little bit in terms of struggling to come up with new ideas because there’s not so much one-on-one discussion.

但我确实觉得，如果这种情况再持续一年，美国经济将因难以提出新想法而受到一些影响，因为没有太多一对一的讨论。

I’m not randomly meeting people.

我不是随机认识人的。

I can easily Zoom current people I know, but it’s much harder to come up with random people at seminars you would’ve gone to, but clearly aren’t.

我可以轻松地缩放当前我认识的人，但在你本来会参加但显然没有参加的研讨会上随机找到一些人要困难得多。