财税茶座

经济学人： where other historians saw a mob of hungry peasants, E.P. Thompson saw resistance to capitalism. Studying England’s 18th-century food riots, the Marxist historian coined the term “moral economy”. The rioters, he argued, were not motivated purely by empty bellies, but by a belief that the bakers, farmers and millers had violated paternalist customs, which suggested they should limit their profit, sell locally and not hold back grain. Gradually, Thompson argued, the moral economy was being displaced by a market economy, in which prices follow the amoral logic of supply and demand, rather than ideas of what would be a “fair price” in times of scarcity. 其他历史学家看到的是一群饥饿的农民，而 E.P.汤普森看到了对资本主义的抵制。这位马克思主义历史学家在研究英国 18 世纪的粮食骚乱时，创造了“道德经济”一词。他认为，骚乱者的动机并不纯粹是空腹，而是认为面包师、农民和磨坊主违反了家长式的习俗，这表明他们应该限制利润，在当地销售，而不是扣留粮食。汤普森认为，道德经济逐渐被市场经济所取代，在市场经济中，价格遵循非道德的供求逻辑，而不是稀缺时期的“公平价格”理念。 Americans may not be rioting over bread prices, but they are angry. President Joe Biden now faces a tight race for re-election. S

经济学人： The approach was fun, but has fallen out of favour 这种方法很有趣，但已经失宠了 “Economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life.” So starts Alfred Marshall’s “Principles of Economics”, a 19th-century textbook that helped create the common language economists still use today. Marshall’s contention that economics studies the “ordinary” was not a dig, but a statement of intent. The discipline was to take seriously some of the most urgent questions in human life. How do I pay my bills? What do I do for a living? What happens if I get sick? Will I ever be able to retire? “经济学是一门研究人类日常生活的学科。”阿尔弗雷德 · 马歇尔（Alfred Marshall）的《经济学原理》（Principles of Economics）就是这样开始的，这是一本 19 世纪的教科书，帮助创造了经济学家今天仍在使用的通用语言。马歇尔关于经济学研究 “普通” 的论点不是挖掘，而是一种意图的陈述。这门学科是认真对待人类生活中一些最紧迫的问题。我如何支付账单？我靠什么谋生？如果我生病了怎么办？我能退休吗？ In 2003 the New York Times published a profile of Steven Levitt, an economist at the University of Chicago, in which he expressed a very different perspective: “In Levitt’s view,” the article read, “eco

  A fter spending   28 years, two months and 19 days marooned on an island, Robinson Crusoe does not lose his nose for adventure or his “native propensity to rambling”. He crosses the Pyrenees, stalked by “hellish wolves”, witnesses the “pomp and poverty” of China and battles Tartars on the Russian steppe. 在被困在一座岛屿上 28 年零 2 个月零 19 天之后，鲁宾逊·克鲁索并没有失去对冒险的兴趣，也没有失去他“与生俱来的漫无目的的倾向”。他穿越比利牛斯山脉，被“地狱狼”跟踪，目睹了中国的“盛况和贫困”，并在俄罗斯草原上与鞑靼人作战。 The character’s strangest adventure, however, is none of these. It is surely his centuries-long ramble through the literature of economics. Crusoe has appeared in Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital”, John Maynard Keynes’s “General Theory” and Milton Friedman’s Chicago lectures on “Price Theory”. He has an entry in the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. And he often washes up in economics textbooks. 然而，这个角色最奇怪的冒险并不是这些。这无疑是他几个世纪以来对经济学文献的漫游。鲁滨逊曾出现在卡尔·马克思的《资本论》、约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯的《通论》和米尔顿·弗里德曼的芝加哥讲座《价格理论》中。 《新帕尔格雷夫经济学词典》中有他的条目。而且他经常在经济学教科书上洗白。 Crusoe’s economic appeal is unsurprising. T