The Nobel Prize to Hall and Woodford: A Macroeconomic Journey

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2026 has been awarded to Robert E.

2026 年瑞典央行纪念阿尔弗雷德·诺贝尔经济科学奖授予罗伯特·E·诺贝尔 (Robert E.

Hall and Michael Woodford “”for microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation.” To gain some intuition for what that actually means, it’s useful to flash back a few decades and remember the origins of “macroeconomics” and how macroeconomic analysis was done a half-century ago.

霍尔和迈克尔·伍德福德“为宏观经济稳定的微观经济基础。”为了获得对其实际含义的一些直觉，回顾几十年并记住“宏观经济学”的起源以及半个世纪前如何进行宏观经济分析是有用的。

There’s an old phrase about “painting with a broad brush,” when you skip past smaller details.

有句老话讲的是“以大笔作画”，即跳过较小的细节。

In this brief overview, I intend to go well beyond painting with a broad brush, perhaps closer to painting with an industrial-power spray-gun.

在这个简短的概述中，我打算超越用粗刷进行绘画，也许更接近于用工业动力喷枪进行绘画。

Economists have been writing about subjects related to what we now call “macroeconomics” for centuries.

几个世纪以来，经济学家一直在撰写与我们现在所说的“宏观经济学”相关的主题。

But t he actual terminology seems to have emerged during the Great Depression, when it became abundantly clear that entire national economies could malfunction at the same time without the occurence of a disaster like a war or pandemic.

但实际的术语似乎是在大萧条期间出现的，当时人们非常清楚，整个国家的经济可能同时出现故障，而不会发生战争或流行病等灾难。

The great Norwegian economist Ragnar Frisch, c o-winner of the first Nobel prize in economics awarded in 1969, was inventing a new terminology when he wrote in 1933: “”The micro-dynamic analysis is an analysis by which we try to explain in some detail the behaviour of a certain section of the huge economic mechanism, taking for granted that certain general parameters are given …

伟大的挪威经济学家拉格纳·弗里希 (Ragnar Frisch) 是 1969 年首届诺贝尔经济学奖的共同获得者，他在 1933 年写道：“微观动力学分析是一种分析，我们试图通过它来详细解释庞大经济机制中某一部分的行为，并假定某些一般参数是给定的……

The macrodynamic analysis, on the other hand, tries to give an account of the whole economic system taken in its entirety.” By the 1940s, the terms “microeconomics” and “macroeconomics” were being commonly used in the professional writing of economists, and even in a few textbooks.

另一方面，宏观动力学分析试图从整体上解释整个经济体系。”到了 20 世纪 40 年代，“微观经济学”和“宏观经济学”这两个术语在经济学家的专业写作中，甚至在一些教科书中被广泛使用。

At about the same time, not coincidentally, Simon Kuznets was leading an effort to measure the entire economy–that is, he was defining and inventing what we now refer to as “gross domestic product.” Kuznets received the Nobel prize in 1971, the third year it was awarded.

大约在同一时间，西蒙·库兹涅茨正在领导一项衡量整个经济的工作，也就是说，他正在定义和发明我们现在所说的“国内生产总值”。库兹涅茨于 1971 年获得诺贝尔奖，这是该奖颁发的第三年。

As it became conceivable to write down what was meant by a macroeoconomy, in categories, Wassily Leontief created the “input-output method,” in which you conceive of the economy as a giant spreadsheet, with all economic inputs listed as columns and all economic outputs listed as rows–thus showing what inputs went into each output.

当可以想象用类别来写下宏观经济的含义时，瓦西里·列昂提夫创建了“投入产出法”，在这种方法中，你可以将经济视为一个巨大的电子表格，所有经济投入都列为列，所有经济产出都列为行——从而显示每个产出中的投入。

Leontief wins the Nobel prize in 1973.

1973年列昂惕夫荣获诺贝尔奖。

Looking at an economy as an organized group of inputs and outputs combined easily with practical questions: By looking at these relationships in the past, can we forecast what will happen in the future if there is, say, a boom or bust in one area of the economy?

将经济视为一组有组织的投入和产出，很容易与实际问题结合起来：通过观察过去的这些关系，我们能否预测如果经济的某个领域出现繁荣或萧条，未来会发生什么？

Can we use this tool for public policy, perhaps to prevent a recurrence of the Great Depression?

我们能否将这一工具用于公共政策，或许可以防止大萧条再次发生？

I n 1980, Lawrence Klein won the Nobel prize for work in building up many-equation macroeconomic models : for example, his famous Wharton model in the late 1960s started with 200 equations, but eventually expanded to more than 1,000 equations.

1980 年，劳伦斯·克莱因因建立多方程宏观经济模型而获得诺贝尔奖：例如，他在 20 世纪 60 年代末著名的沃顿模型最初有 200 个方程，但最终扩展到 1000 多个方程。

The macroeconomic model had joined with the then-newfangled power of computers.

宏观经济模型与当时新兴的计算机能力结合在一起。

There was a brief shining moment for economists in the 1960s when it seemed as if all of this was leading to a full understanding of the macroeconomy and appropriate macroeconomic policies.

20 世纪 60 年代，经济学家经历了一段短暂的辉煌时刻，当时所有这些似乎都导致了对宏观经济和适当宏观经济政策的充分理解。

And then came the deep recessions, unemployment, and high inflation of the 1970s, and all that confidence went out the window.

然后是 20 世纪 70 年代的严重衰退、失业和高通胀，所有信心都消失了。

Among the top concerns was that there had been an an observed “Phillips curve” relationship in in the preceding decades that if unemployment was extremely low, it was a sign that the economy was “overheating” and that inflation was likely to rise, but if unemployment was high, inflationary pressures would then drop off.

其中最令人担忧的是，在过去的几十年里，存在着一种观察到的“菲利普斯曲线”关系，即如果失业率极低，则表明经济“过热”，通货膨胀可能会上升，但如果失业率很高，通货膨胀压力就会下降。

But the 1970s famously had “stagflation”–both high unemployment and high inflation at the same time.

但 20 世纪 70 年代出现了著名的“滞胀”——同时出现高失业率和高通胀。

Such an outcome was literally impossible in the context of the big macroeconomic models of the 1960s.

在 20 世纪 60 年代的宏观经济模型背景下，这样的结果实际上是不可能的。

The field of economics is never short of skeptics, and there were skeptics about the 1,000-equation macroeconomic models, too.

经济学领域从来不乏怀疑者，对千方程宏观经济模型也有怀疑者。

However, many of those skeptics tended to have proposals for keeping the models and redesigning them in some way.

然而，许多怀疑论者倾向于提出保留模型并以某种方式重新设计它们的建议。

The 1978 paper by Robert Hall cited by this year’s Nobel prize committee offered a much more fundamental challenge.

今年诺贝尔奖委员会引用的罗伯特·霍尔 1978 年的论文提出了一个更为根本的挑战。

Consider the problem of predicting changes in consumption, which makes up about two-thirds of aggregate demand in the macroeconomy.

考虑一下预测消费变化的问题，消费约占宏观经济总需求的三分之二。

The conventional models of the 1960s viewed consumption as determined by current (or recent) income: when people got income, they had a “marginal propensity to consume” some of it and to save the rest, in a way that followed past patterns.

20 世纪 60 年代的传统模型将消费视为由当前（或近期）收入决定：当人们获得收入时，他们有一种“边际倾向”，以遵循过去的模式，消费其中一部分并储蓄其余部分。

In contrast, Hall argued that people made consumption decisions looking forward into the future: that is, choices about how much to consume and how much to save were based on beliefs about whether jobs seemed likely to be secure in the future, whether there were risks of recession or inflation, and other factors.

相比之下，霍尔认为，人们做出的消费决策是面向未来的：也就是说，消费多少和储蓄多少的选择是基于对未来工作是否有保障、是否存在衰退或通货膨胀风险以及其他因素的信念。

There was a clear empirical test to differentiate these approaches.

有一个明确的实证测试来区分这些方法。

The conventional approach made predictions about changes in consumption based on the the 1,000-equation model.

传统方法基于千方程模型对消费变化进行预测。

But Hall reasoned that if current consumption choices were based on future beliefs, then changes in consumption would be based on changes in those future beliefs.

但霍尔​​推断，如果当前的消费选择基于未来信念，那么消费的变化将基于这些未来信念的变化。

By definition, no one can say how beliefs are going to change in the future (if you could, it wouild already be part of your current beliefs).

根据定义，没有人能说出未来信念将如何改变（如果可以的话，它已经成为你当前信念的一部分）。

As a result, Hall argued that changes in consumption should be unpredictable and random; in mathematical terms, a random walk.

因此，霍尔认为消费的变化应该是不可预测的和随机的；用数学术语来说，就是随机游走。

And by golly, when you compared predictions of consumption based on the 1,000-equation models to a prediction of consumption that it was a random change from the prevous period, it turned out that the giant multi-equation model was no better than the random walk.

天哪，当你将基于 1000 个方程模型的消费预测与上一时期随机变化的消费预测进行比较时，结果发现巨型多方程模型并不比随机游走更好。

Hall’s challenge (along with related work done by others) was a hammer-blow to the old-style macroeconomic theorizing.

霍尔的挑战（以及其他人所做的相关工作）是对旧式宏观经济理论的重击。

At a deeper level, the challenge pointed out that the 1,000-equation macroeconomic models were snapshots of what was happening in the economy at a certain time, which could be useful.

在更深层次上，挑战指出，1000个方程的宏观经济模型是特定时间经济中发生的情况的快照，这可能是有用的。

But these snapshots did not explicitly include consumers making decisions, or firms making decisions, or a central bank making decisions.

但这些快照并没有明确包括消费者做出决策、企业做出决策或央行做出决策。

An alternative framework was already under development in the 1970s, which in turn led to Nobel prizes for Robert E.

一个替代框架在 20 世纪 70 年代就已经在开发中，这反过来又为 Robert E.

Lucas in 1995 , for Finn E.

卢卡斯，1995 年，为 Finn E.

Kydland and Edward C.

基德兰和爱德华 C.

Prescott in 2004, and for Edmund S.

普雷斯科特于 2004 年，埃德蒙·S.

Phelps in 2006 , as well as many other contributors who didn’t win a Nobel.

2006 年的菲尔普斯，以及许多其他未获得诺贝尔奖的贡献者。

But in some ways, this new version of macroeconomics had lots of individual insights, but not a compact overall perspective, on which more complex formulations could be built.

但在某些方面，这种新版本的宏观经济学有很多个人见解，但没有一个紧凑的整体视角，可以在此基础上构建更复杂的公式。

This is where Michael Woodford enters our scenario.

这就是迈克尔·伍德福德进入我们的场景的地方。

Each year, the Nobel prize committee writes a “Scientific background” paper to explain the contributions of the prize-winners, and I quote from it here:

诺贝尔奖委员会每年都会写一篇“科学背景”论文来解释获奖者的贡献，我在这里引用一下：

A new framework for macroeconomic stabilization policy needed to be built up, one that, like the Keynesian approach, also recognized the shortcomings of markets and, therefore, the need for government interventions.

需要建立一个新的宏观经济稳定政策框架，该框架与凯恩斯主义方法一样，也认识到市场的缺点，因此也认识到政府干预的必要性。

However, in contrast to the previous framework, the new one had to rest on an understanding of the fact that macroeconomic outcomes cannot simply be represented as stable relationships between aggregate variables.

然而，与之前的框架相比，新框架必须基于这样一个事实的理解：宏观经济结果不能简单地表示为总变量之间的稳定关系。

Rather, macroeconomic outcomes had to be seen as the cumulative result of actions taken by all the individual consumers and firms in the economy.

相反，宏观经济结果必须被视为经济中所有个体消费者和企业所采取行动的累积结果。

The experience during the 1970s also convinced the profession that consumers and firms were far more forward-looking than had been previously thought: they pay careful attention to where both monetary and fiscal policy are heading and, hence, to expected inflation and future aggregate activity.

20 世纪 70 年代的经验也让业界相信，消费者和企业比之前想象的更具前瞻性：他们密切关注货币和财政政策的走向，从而关注预期的通胀和未来的总体活动。

Therefore, a new framework had to describe economic actors as purposefully reacting to government stabilization policy as well as to the fundamental factors causing the fluctuations in economic activity.

因此，新的框架必须将经济行为者描述为有目的地对政府稳定政策以及导致经济活动波动的基本因素做出反应。

Lastly, these fundamental factors should be expected to vary in nature over time: different recessions occur for different fundamental reasons, and may therefore also require different policy measures.

最后，这些基本因素的性质会随着时间的推移而变化：不同的衰退是由于不同的根本原因而发生的，因此可能也需要不同的政策措施。

…

……

Through a series of subsequent papers, built on Hall’s consumption framework as well as other important developments in macroeconomic theory during the 1970s and 1980s, Michael Woodford arose as the key architect behind the so-called New Keynesian model: a full macroeconomic stabilization framework that has become the main tool for policymakers today.

通过基于霍尔消费框架以及 20 世纪 70 年代和 1980 年代宏观经济理论的其他重要发展的一系列后续论文，迈克尔·伍德福德成为所谓新凯恩斯主义模型背后的关键架构师：一个完整的宏观经济稳定框架，已成为当今政策制定者的主要工具。

In his 2003 monograph, Woodford summarizes as well as further develops the general setting.

伍德福德在 2003 年的专着中总结并进一步发展了总体背景。

The original theory was chiefly aimed as a foundation for monetary policy analysis but subsequently also became the main tool for the analysis of fiscal policy.

最初的理论主要是作为货币政策分析的基础，但后来也成为财政政策分析的主要工具。

This model features departures from perfect competition, with firms charging markups over marginal cost, as well as sticky prices and wages preventing the efficient use of resources.

这种模式的特点是背离完全竞争，企业收取高于边际成本的加价，以及粘性价格和工资阻碍资源的有效利用。

Despite allowing consumers and firms in the model to adapt their behavior to changes in government policy, it shows how appropriately used fiscal and monetary policy can improve welfare by stabilizing the economy in the face of disturbances.

尽管模型中允许消费者和企业根据政府政策的变化调整自己的行为，但它表明，适当使用财政和货币政策可以通过在面临干扰时稳定经济来改善福利。

…

……

The simplest New Keynesian model has only three equations; nevertheless, it is a very powerful tool for understanding some key aspects of how monetary policy works.

最简单的新凯恩斯模型只有三个方程；尽管如此，它是理解货币政策运作方式的一些关键方面的非常强大的工具。

The first equation summarizes consumer behavior and is in fact Hall’s theory of consumption.

第一个方程总结了消费者行为，实际上是霍尔的消费理论。

The second equation describes how profit-maximizing firms set prices when it is costly to change them, and the third and final equation captures the central bank’s interest-rate policy.

第二个方程描述了当改变价格成本高昂时，追求利润最大化的企业如何设定价格，第三个也是最后一个方程反映了央行的利率政策。

When analyzing monetary policy quantitatively using this framework, additional variables and equations are added; central banks often have medium- as well as large-scale versions tailored to their national economies in question.

使用该框架定量分析货币政策时，添加了额外的变量和方程；中央银行通常有适合其国民经济的中型和大型版本。

Similarly, finance ministries and government agencies analyzing fiscal policy build versions of the model with yet another, slightly different, focus.

同样，分析财政政策的财政部和政府机构构建了该模型的版本，但侧重点略有不同。

Taking this together, macroeconomics has undergone an enormous pivot in the last half-century.

综上所述，宏观经济学在过去半个世纪经历了巨大的转变。

The macroeconomics of the 1960s was (implicitly) built on a belief that if one could write down a detailed version of what was happening in the macroeconomy for a given period, like a year, one could then rely on the relationships between the main aggregate economic variables to be roughly constant over time, in a way that would allow analysis and policy-making.

20 世纪 60 年代的宏观经济学（隐含地）建立在这样一种信念之上：如果人们能够写下特定时期（例如一年）宏观经济中发生的情况的详细版本，那么人们就可以依靠主要总体经济变量之间的关系随着时间的推移大致保持不变，从而可以进行分析和制定政策。

But this vision of macroeconomics lacked expectation-forming consumers, firms, and policy-makers, interacting in an economy with imperfect competition and slow-to-adjust (“sticky”) prices and wages.

但这种宏观经济学愿景缺乏形成预期的消费者、企业和政策制定者，他们在竞争不完全、价格和工资调整缓慢（“粘性”）的经济中相互作用。

In a phrase, it lacked “microeconomic foundations.” The task of building out alternative versions of Woodford’s very basic approach is still very much a work in progress: as one of many examples, you will notice that the basic three-equation model doesn’t have a financial sector.

简而言之，它缺乏“微观经济基础”。构建伍德福德非常基本的方法的替代版本的任务仍然是一项正在进行的工作：作为许多示例之一，您会注意到基本的三方程模型没有金融部门。

For a starting point on how economists, policymakers, and central banks have been building on this model over time, I recommend both the “Scientific Background” paper from the Nobel prize committee and Jordi Galí’s article “The State of New Keynesian Economics: A Partial Assessment,” from the Summer 2018 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives (where I work as Managing Editor.)

要了解经济学家、政策制定者和中央银行如何随着时间的推移建立这一模型，我推荐诺贝尔奖委员会的“科学背景”论文和 Jordi Galí 的文章“新凯恩斯主义经济学的现状：部分评估”，该文章摘自《经济展望杂志》（Journal of Economic Perspectives）2018 年夏季号（我担任该杂志的总编辑）。

The post The Nobel Prize to Hall and Woodford: A Macroeconomic Journey first appeared on Conversable Economist .

霍尔和伍德福德的诺贝尔奖：宏观经济之旅首先发表在《Conversable Economist》杂志上。