評論
打印
Finance and Economics
財經
Free exchange: Moral hazard
自由交流：道德風險
Economists cannot avoid making value judgments, however much they might wish to.
經濟學家無法避免作出價值判斷, 不管他們可能多想避免。
AMID the name-calling and bluster that mar many fights between economists are a few common tactics.
在讓經濟學家間的許多論戰變得污濁不堪的謾罵恫嚇之中，有一些常見的策略。
Belligerents may attack the theory used to support a claim, or the data analysis used to quantify an effect.
交戰雙方可能攻擊某種理論被用來支持一種訴求，或者是某種數據分析被用來量化一種效應。
During the debate over President Donald Trump's tax bill, to take a recent example, economists bickered over which side had more credibly calculated the economic effect.
拿最近的一個例子來說，在有關特朗普稅法的爭論期間，經濟學家圍繞著哪一方更加可信地核算了經濟效應展開了論戰。
They did not, for the most part, argue about whether it was morally acceptable to pass a regressive tax reform after years of wage stagnation and rising inequality.
他們大都沒有論及在數年的工資停滯和日漸加劇的不平等之后，通過一項累退的稅收改革在道德方面是否可以接受。
To do so would strike many economists as entirely un-economist-like. Yet economics has not always been so shy about moral philosophy.
這么做將會打擊許多經濟學家，使他們完全不像經濟學家一樣。經濟學并不是一直對道德哲學如此害羞。
As well as “The Wealth of Nations”, Adam Smith wrote a “Theory of Moral Sentiments”.
除了《國富論》，亞當斯密還寫了《道德情操論》。
Great 20th-century economists like Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow also took questions of values very seriously.
像保羅·薩繆爾森和肯尼斯·阿羅等20世界偉大的經濟學家們也非常認真地對待價值觀問題。
Their successors would do well to take several pages from their books.
其繼承者們最好從他們的著作中拿出幾頁。
Modern economists have attempted to strip value-judgments out of their policy analyses.
現代經濟學家試圖從其政策分析中剔除價值判斷。
Policies are judged on how they are likely to affect economic variables such as income and its distribution, and how those changes would affect overall welfare.
政策是根據它們如何可能影響諸如收入及其分配等經濟變量而判斷的，也是根據這些變化如何影響整體福利而判斷的。
If the models suggest that one policy choice—a top tax rate of 40%, say, rather than 50%—leads to greater welfare than another, that is usually good enough for an economist.
如果模型表明，一項政策選擇的——比如，最高稅率40%，而不是50%——這就會帶來比另一種稅率更高的福利，這對經濟學家來說通常是足夠好的。
譯文來源余興宇
