7篇学术论文让你了解真实的耶伦

2013年10月15日 15:31
来源：凤凰黄金综合

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2013 年10 月10 日，奥巴马正式提名耶伦担任美联储下任主席。很多人都着重关注了耶伦在美联储和白宫工作的政治经历，忽略了耶伦其实在学术上也有非常高的造诣。耶伦最早在哈佛大学任职助理教授，之后来到伦敦政治经济学院，最后在满负盛誉的哈斯商学院加州大学伯克利分校任教。耶伦写过的很多文章都被学术界广泛引用并且影响深远。她常常和自己的丈夫，伯克利教授乔治阿克尔洛夫一起合著写作。本文列举了耶伦17 篇非常有价值的文章，并分别对这些文章进行了简单的概括和总结。

1-3. "The fair wage-effort hypothesis and unemployment"(1990) /"Fairness and Unemploy- ment" (1988) / "Efficiency wage models of unemployment" (1984)

“公平工资努力程度假设和失业”（1990）／“公平和失业”（1988）／“失业的效率工资

模型”（1984）

These papers— all but the last co-authored by Akerlof — address what's known in the economics literature as "efficiency wage theory." That's the idea that paying workers more than the market wage boosts productivity and ends up being worth it for the employer. The famous example is Henry Ford's decision to pay workers enough to afford a Model T for themselves. However, efficiency wages can also result in involuntary unemployment, since they move wages away from the market equilibrium.

除了最后一个与阿克尔洛夫一起写的文章之外，这些文章都强调了一个在经济学学术术语里称之为“效率工资学说”的概念。其想法是付给劳动者高于市场工资会激发生产率，对于雇者来说最后结果是值得的。最有名的例子是亨利福特关于支付工人足够的工资让他们能自己买得起一辆Model T 的决定.然而，效率工资也会导致一些非自愿性失业，因为它从平衡的市场中移走了一部分工资。

4. "Commodity bundling and the burden of monopoly"(1976)

“商品搭售和垄断的负担”（1976）

"Firms often sell their goods in packages," Yellen and her co-author, William James Adams (now at Michigan, and of no apparent relation to his musical namesake), write. "Sporting and cultural organizations offer season tickets, restaurants provide complete diners, banks offer checking, safe deposit, and travelers' check services for a single fee, and garment manufacturers sell their retailers clothing grab bags comprised of assorted styles, sizes, and colors."

“商家们经常以打包形式出售他们的商品”耶伦和她的合著者威廉(现在在密歇根州,与和他同名的音乐家没有明显的联系)写到。“运动和文化性组织提供季节性门票；餐馆提供完整的餐饮；银行提供支票，存款和旅行支票服务并只收取一个单一费用还有服装生产商卖给他们的零售商们林林总总的混合了各种款式，尺码和颜色的商品。”

5. "Stabilization Policy: A Reconsideration"(2004)

“对稳定政策的一个反思”（2004）

Co-authored with Akerlof, this is perhaps the most relevant paper Yellen wrote for understanding what she's likely to do at the Fed, not least because it's so recent. The paper is a critique of an argument made by Robert Lucas, the Nobellaureate who turned macroeconomics on its head with his mid-1970s critique of Keynesianism.

这篇与阿克洛夫合著的文章，可能是耶伦写过的对于理解她想在联储做什么事最有关联的文章，不仅仅因为它比较近期。这篇文章是一个对于罗伯特卢卡斯的一个论点的评论，这位诺贝尔获奖者以它在20 实际70 年代中期对于凯恩斯理论的评论颠覆了整个宏观经济学。

6-8. "Can Small Deviations from Rationality Make Significant Differences to Economic Equilibria?" (1985) / "A Near-Rational Model of the Business Cycle, With Wage and Price Inertia" (1985) / "Rational Models of Irrational Behavior" (1987)

“ 一个小的理性偏离会对经济平衡造成巨大变化吗？”（1985）／“一个带有收入和价格惯性的近理性的商业周期模型”（1985）／“理性的非理性行为模型”（1987）

These three papers, all co-authored with Akerlof, represent the couple's contribution to the development of what's now known as "New Keynesian" economics. After Lucas faulted Keynesianism for not connecting the ups and downs of the macroeconomy to individual-level economic behavior, Keynesians like Stan Fischer, Olivier Blanchard, Greg Mankiw, and David and Christina Romer started to try to bridge the gap by adding complications at the individual level that could add up to the big economic swings that Keynesian theory predicts.

这三篇文章都与阿克洛夫一起合著，它们代表了这对夫妇对于现在大家知道的“新凯恩斯学说”的发展的贡献。在卢卡斯在凯恩斯学说中犯下没有把宏观经济的起伏与个体层面的经济行为相连的错误后，凯恩斯学者们像Stan Fischer, Olivier Blanchard, Greg Mankiw,和David 还有Christina Romer 开始尝试加上在个体层面上的那些凯恩斯学中预测的可能会加大经济振幅的错综复杂的事务来弥补这一空白。

9. “What Makes Advertising Profitable?” (1977)

“什么让广告赚钱？”（1977）

Co-authored with Adams, this is a pretty stirring indictment of advertising. They argue that advertising can be profitable if (a) a company is a monopoly or has some market power, and can use it to boost surplus or (b) if it shifts some surplus from consumers to the business,which can happen even without a monopolies. Neither monopoly nor shirking consumers is a particularly attractive mechanism. Yellen and Adams are hardly alone in indicting advertising for bad consequences.

这篇与亚当一起合著的文章，是一篇令人激动的对于广告的控诉。他们认为广告在以下情形是可以赚钱的，如果（a)一家公司是垄断企业或者有市场影响力，可用其促进盈余或者（b)如果它从消费者转移一部分盈余到业务上来，它连垄断都不需要就可以发生。垄断或者逃避消费者都不是特别有吸引力的的机制。耶伦和亚当在控诉广告所造成的坏影响上很少不一致。

10. “Job Switching and Job Satisfaction in the U.S. Labor Market.”(1988)

“在美国劳工市场的工作变动和工作满意程度”（1988）

"As man does not live by bread alone, people do not quit only for wages." That line, the concluding one of this paper co-authored by Akerlof and Andrew Rose, is a great summation of the underlying thesis: if you take into account that some people get non-monetary benefits and costs from their jobs, a lot about the labor market (unemployment being mainly involuntary, quit rates being higher when unemployment is low, quit rates falling with job tenure, etc.) starts to make more sense. Akerlof, Rose, and Yellen build a model to illustrate this and check it against empirical evidence.

“因为人们不仅仅通过面包而存活，人们不会只因为收入而辞去工作。”这句话是一篇与阿克洛夫和安卓罗斯合著的文章的总结，是对于一个潜在理论的很好总结：如果考虑到一些人从工作中得到非金钱的好处和成本，那么很多关于劳工市场（失业主要是非自愿性的，当失业率低时辞职率升高，辞职率随着工作任期而降低等现象）开始更能让人理解。阿克洛夫,罗斯和耶伦建立了一个阐述这个理论的模型并且用已观察和试

验为依据的证据来验证此方法。

11. "An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Child bearing in the United States"(1996)

“美国婚外孩子所受影响的分析”（1996）

Co-written with Akerlof and Michael Katz and published in the midst of the welfare reform debate in the United States (and when Yellen was a Fed Governor), the paper aims to explain why out of wedlock births had grown considerably in previous decades. Neither of the two main theories advanced to explain it held up. Charles Murray's idea that generous welfare benefits to mothers caused the increase didn't hold up to even the lightest empirical scrutiny,and William Julius Wilson's theory that a decline in male employment (particularly black male employment) reduced the pool of marriageable men, causing the increase, didn't fare much better.

与阿克洛夫和迈克尔卡兹合著，在美国福利改革辩论当中（当耶伦还是美联储理事时）发表，这篇文章目的是解释为什么非婚生孩子在近几十年增长非常巨大。主要的两个学说都没有被推举为更能解释此现象。查尔斯穆雷的理解是慷慨的福利对母亲们大有好处并导致了增长，这个理论并没有通过最基本的实验检查。而威廉母威尔森的理论是男性雇员的减少（特别是黑人男性雇员）减少了可结婚男性的数量，这个理论也没有更有说服力。

12. "East Germany in from the Cold: The Economic Aftermath of Currency Union"(1991)

“东德摆脱孤立：货币统一后的经济结果”（1991）

Co-written with Akerlof, Rose, and Helga Hessenius, this paper tackles the question of how to reverse the severe depression that German reunification caused in the East. East German customers started buying Western products rather than domestic ones, and foreign buyers weren't purchasing East German goods either. The solution, they argued, was a big infrastructure spending program, to boost employment as well as attract private investment, as well as work subsidies.

与阿克洛夫，罗斯和海格赫森合著,这篇文章着重关注了如何挽救德国合并后在东德所带来的严重的大萧条这一问题。东德的消费者们开始买西部的产品而不是国内的，而外国的消费者也不买东德的产品。解决方法，他们指出应该是一个庞大的基础建设开销计划来刺激就业和吸引私人投资和工作津贴。

13. "Unemployment Through the Filter of Memory"(1985)

“从记忆中过滤出来的失业”（1985）

Here, Akerlof and Yellen construct a measure of the psychological painfulness of unemployment by comparing peoples' recollections of unemployment to their actual experience of it. If people are unemployed but don't recall or mention it when surveyed later on, that's a sign the period of unemployment wasn't that psychological harsh. If, however,they recall it, that suggests that it's been at the front of their mind for an extended period. The authors find that the salience of unemployment had fallen for younger and older workers in recent years, suggesting that it had become less painful.

在这篇文章里，阿克洛夫和耶伦建立了一个用比较人们记忆中的失业和实际感受来衡量人们对失业的心理痛苦的方法。如果人们失业后在之后的调查中并不重提这件事，那么这就是一个信号，表示在失业期间，心理并没有非常不适。如果相反的情形，他们重提这件时，那么表示这件事在相当一段时间内在他们的脑海中挥之不去。作者们发现对于年轻的或者上年纪的工作者来说，失业的显著性在近几年正在下降，表明失业正变得不那么痛苦了。

14-5. "Factor Mobility, Regional Development, and the Distribution of Income"(1977) and "Consequences of a Tax on the Brain Drain for Unemployment and Income Inequality in Less Developed Countries"(1975)

“要素流动，区域发展和收入分配”（1977）和“在相对落后国家因失业和收入不公而造成的税收流失的后果”（1975）

Both co-authored with Rachel McCulloch (now at Brandeis), these papers concern developing countries and their attitudes toward the migration of residents to more developed countries.They argue that the main consequence of barriers to such migration is to benefit skilled workers in developing countries at the expense of unskilled ones. "The opposition of less developed countries to relaxation of immigration controls by advanced countries may be rationalized in terms of the redistribution of income from unskilled to skilled labor which would result from such a change," they write in the former paper. In the latter, they are explicit that taxing or otherwise deterring migration will likely result in increased income inequality in the developing country in question. Taken together, the papers are a powerful argument against the "brain drain" argument for preventing skilled immigration from developing to developed countries. For more on this topic, see Lant Pritchett and Michael Clemens.

这两篇文章都是与雷切尔(现在在Brandeis)合著的，它们都关注发展中国家和它们对于本国公民移民到发展更好的国家的态度。他们指出阻碍此类移民最主要的后果是在发展中国家中以缺乏技术的工人为代价而给有技术的工人带来好处。不发达国家对于移民政策的松懈管理是被发达国家控制着的，这种对立可以在非技能劳动力与技能劳动力的收入重新分配来实现合理化，从而产生一种变化。”他们在以前的文章中写道。在后面，他们明确说明给移民上税或阻止移民会导致在发展中国家的收入不均情况加剧。

总结来说，这些文章有力的反对了“人才流失”论点中反对有技能的移民从发展中国家到发达国家来的观点。

16. "On Keynesian Economics and the Economics of the Post-Keynesians" (1988)

“凯恩斯主义经济学和后凯恩斯主义经济学”（1988）

This paper is way, way above my pay grade math-wise, but it's evidence that Yellen was very familiar with the arguments of the so-called "post-Keynesians," a left-wing heterodox economics movement that emphasizes the role or risk and irrationality in the economy, and tends to view financial instability as inherent to capitalism. For more on this topic, see my profiles of the Modern Monetary Theory movement and the UMass Amherst economics department.

这篇文章是表明耶伦对后凯恩斯主义很熟悉的证据，它是一个左翼异端的经济运动，它强调了风险和非理性事件在经济中扮演的角色，趋向把金融中的不稳定性看成是资本主义的产物。

17. "Waiting for Work"(1990)

“等待着工作”（1990）

Here, Yellen, Akerlof, and Rose look at the phenomenon known as "lock-in." Normally, when unemployment falls, the wages offered by firms increases, to reflect the decline in the supply of available workers. That means that those who take jobs in recession get lower wages. What's more, their wages later on don't rise as the economy starts to boom again — they're "locked in." Meanwhile, those who get jobs in booms are able to "lock in" higher wages. The authors model the phenomenon and then demonstrate that empirical evidence matches the theory.

在这篇文章中，耶伦, 阿克洛夫和罗斯关注一个被大家以名字为“锁住”所知道的现象。正常的来说，当失业率降低时，公司给的工资会上涨，反映了可工作的人数量下降。这意味着那些在经济萧条中参加工作的人拿着较低的工资。更严重的是，他们的工资在以后经济开始复苏后也不会上涨——他们被“锁住”了。与此同时，那些在经济好转期间参加工作的人能“锁住”更高的工资。这文章中的作者模拟了此现象然后阐述了很多实验证据都符合这个理论。