走近理查德?塞勒

There are many ways, all easy and enjoyable, to appreciate the work of Richard Thaler, the economist who this week was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. If you do nothing else, and know nothing else about his work, simply read his New York Times column from two years ago on why normal people are not like Mr Spock.

欣賞理查德•塞勒(Richard Thaler)的研究成果有許多方式，這些方式都很輕松愉悅;這位經(jīng)濟學家本周被授予諾貝爾經(jīng)濟學獎(Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences)。如果你其他什么都不做，又對他的其他研究成果一無所知，那就讀一讀他從兩年前開始在《紐約時報》(New York Times)上寫的專欄，關于正常人為什么不像斯波克(Mr Spock，《星際旅行》主角之一——譯者注)。

Know that his column is an elegant snapshot of his wit, gift of communication and life’s work in economics. A founder of the field of behavioural economics, his mission has been to analyse economic decisions as real people make them. (The Times has a curated page with a selection of some of his other newspaper columns.)

要知道，他的專欄是他的智慧、溝通天賦、以及他在經(jīng)濟學上投入的畢生心血的一個精美寫照。作為行為經(jīng)濟學領域的創(chuàng)始人，塞勒的使命是分析現(xiàn)實世界的人們做出經(jīng)濟決策的方式。(《泰晤士報》(The Times)曾策劃過一個版面，收集了塞勒在其他報紙上寫的專欄。)

For more depth, you could do worse than reading the Nobel committee’s popular information paper and the scientific background paper, which are entirely accessible. They show Thaler’s work as organised around three related concepts: bounded rationality, bounded willpower and bounded self-interest.

如果要更深入地了解塞勒，看看諾貝爾評獎委員會受人歡迎的信息文件和科學背景文件是不錯的選擇，這些資料都是深入淺出的。它們展示了塞勒的研究成果圍繞三個相關的概念：有限理性(bounded rationality)、有限意志力(bounded willpower)以及有限自利(bounded self-interest)。

To mention a few examples: on bounded rationality, he documented the so-called endowment effect. The price people say they are willing to pay for a given object is often a fraction of the price for which they are willing to part with it, even after possessing it for only a few minutes.

舉幾個例子：關于有限理性，塞勒提出了所謂的稟賦效應(endowment effect)。人們稱他們愿意為某一物品支付的價格，往往是他們愿意賣出該物品的心理價位的一小部分，即使他們擁有這件物品只有幾分鐘。

On bounded willpower, Thaler was among the first to demonstrate the particular bias for consumption today. Humans put a much higher premium on the present relative to the imminent future than they discriminate between two moments separated by the same length of time but further into the future. This leads people to take less care of their future than they really intend to.

關于有限意志力，塞勒是最先論證人們對于即時消費的特別偏好的學者之一。相對于即將來臨的未來，人類對“當下”看重得多，以至于他們區(qū)別對待兩個間隔相等、但其中一個在更遙遠未來的時刻。這導致人們?yōu)樽约旱膶?ldquo;未雨綢繆”的程度往往低于他們的真正意愿。

On bounded self-interest, he popularised experiments such as the “dictator” and “ultimatum” games. These are stylised problems of sharing an amount of money where a true homo economicus would keep everything for himself or herself, but real people show a strong preference for fairness. The preferences for fairness that he and his colleagues first identified have held up in a variety of settings and contexts, including with large amounts of real money.

關于有限自利，塞勒推廣了“獨裁者”和“最后通牒”等實驗。這些是關于分一筆錢的理論問題;在這類問題上，一個真正的“經(jīng)濟人”(homo economicus)會將一切據(jù)為己有，但真實的人會表現(xiàn)出對公平的強烈偏好。塞勒和他的同事們最先確認的這種對公平的偏好存在于各種場合和背景下，包括在處理一大筆真正的錢時。

I said you could do worse than read the Nobel committee papers. You could also do better, which is by reading some of Thaler’s own work. His wonderfully didactic approach is on superb display in the “Anomalies” section he has written at various intervals for the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Each Anomaly piece documents a behavioural pattern that is simple, immediately recognisable and flies in the face of conventional economic theory. Happily, the columns are available for open access on the JEP website.

前面說了看看諾貝爾評獎委員會的文件是個不錯的方法。但還有更好的選擇，那就是讀一些塞勒自己的著述。他不定期為《經(jīng)濟展望期刊》(Journal of Economic Perspectives)撰寫一個名為《異?，F(xiàn)象》(Anomalies)的專欄，出色地展現(xiàn)了自己精湛的說教方式。該專欄的每篇文章都記錄了一種簡單、馬上就讓人認得出、而且公然違背常規(guī)經(jīng)濟學理論的行為模式。很幸運，這些專欄文章都可以在《經(jīng)濟展望期刊》的網(wǎng)站上找到。

But beyond the content of Thaler’s work, I want to emphasise its extraordinary reach — intellectually, in its policy influence, and in its impact on the profession.

但除了塞勒著述的內容以外，我想強調的是它在理論上、政策影響上、以及對經(jīng)濟學專業(yè)的影響上達到的非凡程度。

Intellectually, the Nobel paper links Thaler to traditions of thought going back to Aristotle, Adam Smith (in particular his theory of moral psychology) and Freud. Thaler’s focus on the importance of “choice infrastructure”, applied for example in his FT opinion piece on the Brexit referendum, connects him with the political theory literature on power, which stresses that defining the menu of choice is an exercise of power more important than dictating what to choose.

從理論水平上說，諾貝爾文件將塞勒與可以追溯至亞里士多德(Aristotle)、亞當•斯密(Adam Smith)(尤其是他的道德心理學理論)和弗洛伊德(Freud)的思想傳統(tǒng)聯(lián)系在一起。塞勒重視“選擇基礎設施”的重要性——他在英國《金融時報》發(fā)表的關于英國退歐公投的評論文章就運用了這一理論——將他與有關權力的政治理論文獻聯(lián)系起來，這種理論強調，定義選擇菜單是一種對權力的行使，其重要性超過決定選擇什么。

His immediate intellectual predecessors were Maurice Allais and Herbert Simon (also Nobel economics winners). And the list of contemporary scholars who have touched on topics similar to Thaler is a who’s who of economics and decision theory: George Akerlof, Gary Becker, Daniel Kahneman, Reinhard Selten, Thomas Schelling, Amartya Sen, Robert Solow — economic Nobel laureates all.

他的思想上的直接前輩是莫里斯•阿萊(Maurice Allais)和赫伯特•西蒙(Herbert Simon)——這兩人也是諾貝爾經(jīng)濟學獎得主。曾經(jīng)研究和塞勒類似課題的當代學者名單，簡直像是經(jīng)濟學和決策理論領域的名人錄：喬治•阿克洛夫(George Akerlof)、加里•貝克(Gary Becker)、丹尼爾•卡內曼(Daniel Kahneman)、賴因哈德•澤爾騰(Reinhard Selten)、托馬斯•謝林(Thomas Schelling)、阿馬蒂亞•森(Amartya Sen)以及羅伯特•索洛(Robert Solow)，這些人全都是諾貝爾經(jīng)濟學獎得主。

But Thaler’s patient dedication to behavioural economics has arguably influenced policymaking and the economics profession more than any of these earlier laureates. As Tim Harford explains, Thaler’s work made possible the behavioural turn in public policy popularly known as “nudge”. This approach is to exploit people’s behavioural biases and irrationalities in order to non-coercively make them behave in ways seen as more desirable by policymakers — and ideally by the “nudged” themselves. Thaler and his collaborator Cass Sunstein use the paradoxical (but not oxymoronic) term “libertarian paternalism”.

但是可以說，塞勒孜孜不倦鉆研行為經(jīng)濟學對政策制定和經(jīng)濟學專業(yè)的影響，超過了上述所有的諾貝爾經(jīng)濟學獎得主。正如蒂姆•哈福德(Tim Harford)解釋的那樣，塞勒的研究成果讓公共政策引入行為理論(通常被稱為“助推”)成為可能。這種做法是利用人們的行為偏好和不理智傾向，以非強制的方式，讓他們以政策制定者認為更加可取的方式行事——理想情況下這些“助推”的對象也會認為這種方式更加可取。塞勒和其合作者凱斯•桑斯坦(Cass Sunstein)使用了“自由意志主義的家長制”這個似非而是(但并非矛盾)的術語。

As to his role in the academe, Justin Fox tells how Thaler was a consciously quiet revolutionary, who was determined not to antagonise the economics profession with his revolution. The result was to change the system — to some extent at least — from within, and “generations of graduate students have now come of age in an economics profession where behavioural research is, if still not central, perfectly respectable.”

就塞勒在學術界的角色而言，賈斯汀•?？怂?Justin Fox)講述了塞勒是一個有意識低調的革命者，他小心翼翼地不讓自己的革命得罪經(jīng)濟學專業(yè)。結果是從內部——至少在某種程度上——改變了經(jīng)濟學體系，而“一代又一代的研究生在行為學研究受到經(jīng)濟學專業(yè)尊敬(如果還不是處于核心位置的話)的氛圍培養(yǎng)出來”。

John Maynard Keynes wrote that “the master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman philosopher . . . touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought . . . No part of man’s nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard.” Few living economists fit Keynes’s billing better than Thaler.

約翰•梅納德•凱恩斯(John Maynard Keynes)寫道，“經(jīng)濟學大師必須具備多種天賦的罕見結合。他必須是數(shù)學家、歷史學家、政治家和哲學家……在同一個思緒中觸及抽象與具體……還必須考慮到人性或人的制度的每一部分”。在如今仍健在的經(jīng)濟學家當中，沒幾個人比塞勒更符合凱恩斯的描述。