評論
打印
Finance and economics
財經商業
Free exchange
自由交易
One of the giants
巨人
Ronald Coase, the economist who explained why firms exist, died on September 2nd, aged 102
羅納德科斯，著名經濟學家，于9月2日逝世，享年102歲。他向世人闡明了企業存在原因。
I HAVE made no innovations in high theory, was how Ronald Coase modestly summed up his life's work.
羅納德科斯如是總結他一生的事業：在高層理論研究中，我并沒有創新。
My contribution to economics has been to urge the inclusion…of features of the economic system so obvious that…they have tended to be overlooked.
我對經濟領域的貢獻在于，將甄選經濟指標這一步驟引入人們視野，而之前，人們對此并不重視。
Attention to the overlooked helped Mr Coase transform both law and economics.
而正是他對這一被忽視的步驟的注意使得他改變了法律與經濟。
Born in the London suburb of Willesden in 1910 to working-class parents,
1910年，羅納德科斯出生在倫敦威爾斯登的一個工人家庭，
Mr Coase had an academic temperament and an interest in science but lacked a taste for mathematics, a flaw that might have kept him out of economics in later decades.
他很有學術天賦，對于科學也很有興趣，遺憾的是他缺少對數學的嘗試，也許這就是使得他在接下來的十年中無緣經濟的原因。
He studied commerce at the London School of Economics, a course tailored to those destined for middle management.
科斯在倫敦經濟學院學習貿易，這一學科是給將來的中層管理者量身定做的。
The degree included instruction in economics, and he quickly fell for the dismal science.
該學科包含了經濟介紹，科斯很快便迷上了政治經濟。
A one-year travelling scholarship gave him the chance to apply what he had learned.
一年的旅行獎金給予了科斯將所學應用于實踐的機會，
He chose to tour America's industrial cities in the hope of answering a question that troubled him:
他來到美國工業城市，希望能在這找到一直困擾他的問題：
why did companies exist?
企業為何存在。
Economists of the time were enthralled by the special magic of the price mechanism.
時下的經濟學家都被價格機制的神奇魔力吸引。
In a free market, prices should adjust to allocate resources where they are most valued.
在自由市場，通過價格的變動來分配資源，使盡其用。
A certain price for wool, for example, encourages farmers to raise sheep and bring wool to market to meet consumer demand.
例如，如果羊毛價格高，農民就會更多的喂養羊群，將羊毛銷往市場以滿足需求。
As more is produced and demand is sated the price falls, discouraging farmers from wasting time and resources producing unwanted goods.
當生產的羊毛越來越多，需求被不斷滿足，價格就會下降，這就使農民減少生產，避免將時間跟精力浪費在非需商品上。
Yet whereas some parts of the economy rely on prices to guide materials and labour to their best uses, others do not.
經濟在某些方面依靠價格來引導資源和勞力發揮最大作用，而其他方面又并非如此。
Within firms tasks are doled out by fiat and strategies are set by the Politburo of the corporate board. Mr Coase wanted to know why.
在企業里，高層向下布置任務，企業董事會制定政策。科斯想知道為什么是這樣的模式。
As he watched American car plants in action, he realised that the existence of the firm compensated for a critical flaw in the price-setting mechanism.
就在科斯觀察美國汽車工廠運行時，他意識到企業的存在正好彌補了價格生成機制中最嚴重的漏洞。
In the real world it is often costly for buyer and seller to arrive at a final price.
現實生活中，讓買家跟商家達成最后的交易價格很費力。
Transaction costs, like the need to negotiate or draw up contracts, prevent the price mechanism from working smoothly.
交易成本，例如協商，簽合同，這些都會使價格機制無法平穩運行。
Firms would exist, he reckoned, when it was cheaper and easier to co-ordinate activity within a centrally planned organisation than to spell out contract details for every step in the production process.
科斯猜想，當在一個有中心規劃的機構里，協調各部門行動比在生產過程中為每一步都簽訂詳細合同的成本更低更便捷，企業就出現了。
Mr Coase first presented his proposition in a lecture in Dundee in 1932, at the tender age of 21.
科斯首次提出這樣的主張是他1932年在英國敦堤的一次演講中，當時他才21歲。
In 1937 he published The Nature of the Firm, an article based on the Dundee lecture.
1937年，他以在敦堤的演講為基礎出版了《企業的性質》。
An entire field of research would eventually be built on this paper, but it garnered scant attention at first.
后來整個領域的研究都是以科斯在敦堤的演講內容為基礎，只是一開始并未引起很多人的注意。
Mr Coase bounced around British academia in the 1930s and 1940s, from Dundee to Liverpool and back to the LSE, researching the workings of public utilities as he went.
上個世紀30跟40年代，科斯在英國學術界十分活躍，從敦堤到利物浦，然后又回到倫敦經濟學院，科斯一路研究公共事業公司的運行機制。
In 1951 he migrated to America and proved similarly itinerant, until an article on radio-spectrum property rights caught the eye of scholars at the University of Chicago.
1951年，他移民到美國，并不斷地繼續證明類似的理論，直到射頻頻譜的知識產權一文的發表才吸引了芝加哥大學學者們的眼球。
In 1959 he was invited to Chicago to air his views.
1959年，科斯受邀到芝加哥去闡明他的觀點，
His audience included future Nobel prizewinners like George Stigler and Milton Friedman:
底下的觀眾包括像未來諾貝爾得獎者喬治·施蒂格勒，彌爾頓·弗里德曼。
confident, room-commanding men sceptical of Mr Coase's conclusions.
他們自信對科斯的結論表示懷疑。
Over the course of a two-hour discussion the measured Mr Coase won them around.
在兩個小時的討論之后，科斯終于得到他們的認可。
He was asked to write up his arguments and in 1961 produced The Problem of Social Cost, another landmark text.
科斯盡數寫下他的觀點，并于1961年出版了另一代表作《社會成本問題》。
By 1964 Mr Coase was on the University of Chicago's faculty.
從1964年起，科斯一直在芝加哥大學任教。
His debates with the Chicago academics centred on market externalities:
科斯與芝加哥的學者們圍繞市場外部性進行了討論：
economic choices that impose social costs or benefits on others.
經濟選擇會帶來利益或需要社會成本。
Factory pollution may disturb or poison nearby residents, for example.
例如，工廠污染會影響或者危害周圍的居民。
Earlier generations of economists diagnosed a market failure that governments could set to rights.
以往的經濟學家得出政府能調整市場失敗的結論。
The polluting factory does not face any costs from spouting black smoke over a town: the costs are external from its perspective.
污染性工廠對于向城鎮釋放黑煙的成本表示無壓力，因為這個成本在他們的估算外。
A tax on pollution would internalise the cost, however.
但是征收污染稅能將這個成本內部化，
The price mechanism would work once more, as the tax encouraged the factory's managers to reduce pollution to socially optimal levels.
于是價格機制再一次生效，因為稅收能迫使工廠管理者將污染物的排放減少到社會最優水平。
Mr Coase's work suggested another answer.
科斯的成果又暗示了另一個結論。
In the world of theory, without transaction costs, no government intervention would be needed to address externalities.
理論上說，如果沒有交易成本，就不需要政府干預來強調外部性。
The factory owners and the residents could work out side-payments on their own.
工廠擁有者跟居民他們自己就能達成賠償協議，
Residents might pay the factory to emit less or the factory might pay the town for leeway to pollute more.
居民能彌補工廠，讓他們少排放，工廠也能賠償給居民，使自己多排放，
Either way an efficient outcome should result without government help. This Panglossian view became known as the Coase Theorem.
其中任一有效的辦法都不需要政府的幫助。這種趨于至善的觀點就變成了科斯理論。
Yet Mr Coase himself recognised life is more complex than theory.
但是科斯本人也意識到現實遠比理論復雜。
Neither private bargaining nor a pollution tax can make a market perfectly efficient given transaction costs like the expense of monitoring a factory's emissions.
如果考慮到像監控工廠排放這樣的交易成本，不管是私下解決或者立法征稅，都不能使市場最有效。
Mr Coase reckoned the law had a critical economic responsibility: to minimise the disruptive effect of these costs on markets.
于是科斯想到法律負很大的經濟責任：法律能最小化交易成本對市場的負面影響。
A system of clear and easily transferable property rights can play a role like that of the firm, allowing useful economic activity to take place that might otherwise be gummed up by the hassle of negotiating and enforcing contracts.
一個清晰并且容易轉讓的產權體系能扮演一個類似企業這樣的角色，它可以保證那些可能被協商跟強加協議弄砸但其實有利可尋的經濟活動的正常進行。
His insight revolutionised policy.
科斯這般的洞察力使政策發生了變革。
Tradable emissions permits, which helped eliminate acid rain as an environmental problem in America, are a direct application of his work.
可議的排放許可就是科斯理論成果最直接的應用，這項應用幫助降低了美國酸雨這樣的環境問題。
Almost 70 years after that first Dundee lecture Mr Coase won the Nobel prize for economics.
大概在科斯第一次敦堤演講70年后，他獲得了諾貝爾經濟學獎。
A scholar must be content with the knowledge that what is false in what he says will soon be exposed, he noted in his speech.
他在他的演講中提到：一個學者應該有他話語里的錯誤會很快被揭露的意識，并且要對此感到滿意，
As for what is true, he can count on ultimately seeing it accepted, if only he lives long enough.
因為只要他活得夠長，他就能寄希望于看見那些正確的道理被人們接受。
