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Finance & Economics
財經版塊
Labour v capital
勞動力與資本
The battle of the markups
抬價之戰
Companies are raising prices; workers are demanding higher wages. Who is winning?
企業在抬高物價；工人在要求漲薪。究竟誰會是贏家？
“A good compromise”, the saying goes, “is when both parties are dissatisfied.” Dissatisfaction rages in the post-lockdown economy. Households say that price-gouging companies are jacking up prices, contributing to an inflation rate across the rich world of 6.6% year on year.
正如那句諺語所說，“良好的妥協會令雙方都不滿意”。疫情封鎖后的經濟中處處都是不滿。百姓認為哄抬物價的企業抬高了價格，導致富裕國家的通貨膨脹率同比達到了6.6%。
Companies bat such accusations aside, believing that they are the truly wronged party. They complain that staff have become work-shy ingrates who demand ever-higher wages. Earlier this month Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, courted controversy by suggesting that workers should moderate their wage demands—even as he failed to tell companies not to raise their prices.
企業對此說法嗤之以鼻，認為他們才是真正的冤大頭。他們抱怨員工變成了不愿工作，還想要史上最高薪的白眼狼。本月早些時候，英格蘭銀行的行長安德魯·貝利因建議工人降低薪資預期而招致了爭議——但是他沒能阻止企業抬高物價。
A “battle of the markups”, between higher wages and higher shop prices, is under way. And there can only be one winner, all else being equal.
更高的薪資與更高的物價之間的“抬價之戰”正在進行。在其他條件都一樣的情況下，只能有一個贏家。
Broadly speaking, economic output must flow either to owners of capital, in the form of profits, dividends and rents, or to labour, as wages, salaries and perks. Economists refer to this as the “capital” or “labour” share of gdp. Which of the two has the upper hand in the post-lockdown economy?
一般來說，經濟產出要么以利潤、股息和租金的形式流向資本所有者，要么以工資、薪水和津貼的形式流向勞動力。經濟學家將其稱為GDP的“資本”或“勞動力”份額。在疫情封鎖后的經濟中，這兩者誰占了上風?
The Economist has compiled a range of indicators to answer this question. First we calculate a high-frequency measure of the capital-labour share across 30 mostly rich countries.
為了回答這個問題，《經濟學人》編制了一系列指標。首先，我們計算了30個主要是富裕國家的資本-勞動力份額的高頻測量。
In 2020 the aggregate labour share across this group soared. This was largely because firms continued to pay people’s wages—helped, in large part, by government-stimulus programmes—even as gdp collapsed. Advantage, labour.
2020年，這些國家的總勞動力份額占比大幅上升。這在很大程度上是因為即使是在GDP崩潰的時候，企業依然繼續支付員工工資——大部分得益于政府的刺激計劃。這時占優勢的一方是勞動力。
More recently, however, the battle seems to have shifted in favour of capital. Since reaching a peak in 2020 the rich-world labour share has fallen by 2.3 percentage points.
然而，近來，斗爭的天秤似乎已經偏向了資本。自2020年達到峰值以來，富裕國家的勞動力份額下降了2.3個百分點。
Frustratingly, the data only go up to September 2021—and most economists anyway argue that labour’s share is not a perfect gauge of economic fairness, since it is devilishly hard to measure. The evidence since then suggests that countries fall into one of three buckets, depending on how the battle of the markups is playing out.
令人沮喪的是，數據只維持到了2021年9月——總之，大多數經濟學家認為，勞動力份額并不是衡量經濟公平的完美標準，因為它極其難以衡量。自那以來的證據表明，根據抬價戰的結果，各國可分為三類。
In the first camp is Britain. There, underlying wage growth is in the region of 5% a year, unusually fast by rich-world standards. But corporations seem not to have a great deal of pricing power, meaning that they are struggling to fully offset higher costs in the form of higher prices.
第一類是英國。在那里，每年的實際工資增長為5%，按照富裕國家的標準，這個增速異常之快。但企業似乎沒有很大的定價權，這意味著它們正努力用漲價的方式來完全抵消成本的上漲。
Digging into Britain’s national accounts, we estimate that the nominal profit in pounds per unit of goods and services sold is only roughly as high as it was in early 2019, even as unit labour costs are rising by about 3% per year. Labour seems to be winning out at the expense of capital. Perhaps Mr Bailey has a point.
深入研究英國的國民經濟核算，我們估計，雖然單位勞動力成本每年上升約3%，但每單位商品和服務的名義利潤(以英鎊計算)僅與2019年初大致持平。勞動力似乎在以犧牲資本為代價的方式贏得勝利。也許貝利先生有他的道理。
