James Galbraith 經濟學需要徹底改革

James Galbraith 經濟學需要徹底改革

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bR_gDq7JxA&t=3s

2018年7月25日

“開放”和“重組”導致了蘇聯解體。但如果這也導致了正統經濟學的解體，詹姆斯·加爾布雷斯也不會介意。

德克薩斯大學的經濟學家概述了該行業如何變得“自私自利”——通過期刊和大學任命創造了一個部落和限製性的等級製度，將不同的學術研究排除在外。幾十年前，經濟學並不是這樣的，但現在它的封閉思想使獨立學者無法獲得進行真正的開創性研究所需的平台。

加爾布雷斯還討論了他的德克薩斯大學不平等項目 (UTIP) 的工作，該項目正在努力開發一係列新的全球經濟不平等測量方法。
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- 我認為學術界的經濟學專業結構迫切需要改革。我想說它需要兩件事，公開性和改革，開放性和重組。當然，當你應用這些東西時，整個大廈很可能會像蘇聯一樣倒塌，在這種情況下，這不是一件壞事。
我們有什麽？
我們的職業基本上是自私自利的，就像所謂的專業價值等級製度一樣；詹姆斯·加爾布雷斯是誰？通過期刊等結構和部門，這些結構具有深刻的部落性，並且具有深刻的限製性，就他們將發表什麽、他們將承認什麽思想而言。
因此，即使發生這種情況，你也會對此做出反應，即獨立學者。這對資金最充足、最負盛名的大學接受來自這些傳統的人的意願沒有影響。

因此，與 60、70、80 年前的經濟學相比，現在的經濟學群體非常多樣化。

你現在擁有的是一個產生大量統一思想的機器，它被卡住了，無法真正適應這樣一個事實，即這種思想
與我們麵臨的主要問題並不特別相關。

我是詹姆斯·加爾布雷斯。我在德克薩斯大學奧斯汀分校的林登·約翰遜學院任教，

20 年來，我一直擔任和平與安全經濟學家委員會主席。我主要研究經濟不平等，並對政治經濟問題進行一定程度的幹預。

好吧，德克薩斯大學不平等項目是一個已經存在 20 多年的研究小組，其成員基本上是博士生和一些碩士生。什麽是德克薩斯大學不平等項目？它的目標是
開發一係列新的經濟不平等測量方法。主要是薪酬和收入不平等。
在全球範圍內，以一致且密集的方式，以便人們能夠為世界經濟的最大份額構建合理且相當可靠的時間序列。它現在擁有一個最大的全球數據集，大約有 4000 個觀測值，涵蓋了 150 個國家，可追溯到 1963 年。
因此，它的作用是讓研究人員能夠以全新的視角看待各國和各時期的經濟不平等運動。
這允許人們分析各大洲內、各大洲之間的國家之間的相互關係，並實際上證明不平等運動中存在強大的宏觀經濟成分，它在很大程度上受到全球金融體係性質變化的驅動，以及布雷頓森林體係的崩潰、20 世紀 80 年代的債務危機、隨後的利率降低以及 21 世紀的大宗商品複蘇等因素的影響。
這些因素似乎是造成不平等的主要力量，
這與主流文獻或著名皮克提團隊根據稅收記錄所做的選擇性研究的觀點截然不同。

“正常狀態的終結”論題“正常狀態的終結”論題是，人們需要超越方法論程序，即試圖根據過去經濟複蘇模式的記錄來預測大危機等重大事件發生後的未來。

我的觀點是，該係統已經出現了一些相當明顯的結構性發展。

其中之一與資源成本有關，當然，我們知道，在 2008 年危機爆發前的那個夏天，油價上漲了 148 美元一桶。

從那時起，水力壓裂技術得到了發展，這可以說是對高能源價格的一種緩解。但這隻是其中一個因素。第二個因素是全球政治局勢的不穩定。第三個因素是技術變革的性質，我確實相信，我們幾十年來幾乎在世界各地引入的技術是不同的。技術變革的性質在於它對經濟和環境的影響。

Economics Is in Need of Radical Reform

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bR_gDq7JxA&t=3s
2018年7月25日

"Openness" and "restructuring" led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. But if it also led to the collapse of orthodox economics, James Galbraith wouldn't mind.

The University of Texas economist outlines how the profession has become "self-dealing"—creating a tribal and restrictive hierarchy through journals and university appointments that keep diverse scholarship out. Economics wasn't this way just a few decades ago, but now its closed-mindedness keeps independent scholars from getting the platform they need to do real, pathbreaking research.

Galbraith also discusses the work of his University of Texas Inequality Project (UTIP), which is working to develop a new series of measurements of economic inequality at a global scale.
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- I think the structure of the economics profession in the academic world, it's profoundly in need of reform. And I like to say it needs two things, glasnost and perestroika, openness and restructuring.
Of course, when you apply those things the chances are, like the Soviet Union,
the whole edifice will collapse, which would in this case not be a bad thing.
What do we have?
We have a profession which is basically self dealing,and which runs like the let's say
the hierarchy of professional merit；Who is James Galbraith through a structure of journals, and so forth, and departments, which are profoundly tribal, and profoundly restrictive，in terms of what they will publish, what they will admit as a body of ideas.

And so, even when as is happening, you get in reaction to that, Independent scholars.
This has no impact on the willingness of the best funded, and the most prestigious universities to take on board people from those traditions.

And as a result, compared to what economics was 60, 70, 80 years ago, a very diverse group of people. 

What you have now is a machine that produces a substantial uniformity of thought,and which is stuck, cannot really bring itself to adjust to the fact that that thought
is not particularly pertinent to the major problems that we face.
I'm James Galbraith. I teach at the LBJ School, at the University of Texas at Austin,
and I have been was for 20 years, the chair of the Board of Economists for Peace and Security.I work primarily on economic inequality, and certain amount of intervention in matters of political economy.
Well, the University of Texas Inequality Project is a research group that has been in existence for now over 20 years, with cohorts basically of PhD and a few Master's students. What is the University of Texas Inequality Project And its objective has been
to develop a new whole series of measurements of economic inequality. Mostly pay and income inequality.
At the global scale,and in a consistent and let's say dense way so that one can construct reasonable, and reasonably reliable time series for the largest share of the world economy. It now has about and a single largest global dataset about 4000 observations, covering 150 countries going back to 1963.
And so, what it does is permits a researcher to take an entirely fresh look at the movement of economic inequality across countries, and through time.
And that permits one to analyze the interrelationship between countries within  continents, across continents, and to demonstrate in effect that there is a strong macroeconomic component to the movement of inequality, that it's driven in very substantial ways by the changing nature of the global financial regime, and by such things as the breakdown of Bretton Woods, the debt crisis the 1980s, then the reduction of interest rates, and the commodity recovery of the of the 2000s.
These things appear to be very much the dominant forces in the movement of inequality,
and that's quite a different perspective from what one gets out of either the mainstream literature, or the very selective work that's been done based on tax records by the famous Piketty team.
The thesis of the End of Normal The thesis of the end of normal was that one needed to move past the Methodological procedure of trying to project the future after a major event like the great crisis from the record of what was the past pattern of economic recoveries.
And my argument was that there had been some fairly clear structural developments in the system. One of them had to do with the cost of resources, which of course, we know the oil price went up $148 a barrel in the summer before the crisis of 2008.
Since then there's been the development of fracking, which is kind of a reprieve from the very high energy prices. But that was one factor. Second factor was the instability of the global political situation. A third factor was the nature of technological change, and I really do believe that the kind of technology that we are introducing practically everywhere, and have been for several decades is different The nature of technological change in its effect on economic a

活動比前幾波技術發展更活躍。
汽車取代了馬匹，帶來了運輸等活動，
電器帶來了各種清潔、烹飪等活動。
數字技術傾向於將事物移出市場領域，
例如，通過使通信基本上成為一項固定成本活動，沒有邊際成本，對總產品沒有額外貢獻。
因此，這是我們需要掌握的，因為它減少了投資在 GDP 中的份額。
投資來自進口資本貨物這一事實意味著你可以獲得進口抵消。
因此，我們看到投資份額較低，對商業建設的需求較少。
與這種投資相伴而生的是，經濟正在轉向由消費而不是投資周期驅動。
我認為，過去 10 年我們所看到的大部分情況強烈表明，這是正確的分析。第四件事是金融體係發生了什麽。
我認為，銀行在大危機前所采用和推行的商業模式從根本上摧毀了銀行。他們從戰後時期的業務模式（主要為商業投資提供融資）轉變為為消費者貸款和抵押貸款提供融資，並且采用一種日益衰敗和欺詐的商業模式。衰敗和欺詐的意思是，在危機前，他們發放了大量貸款，他們知道或應該知道這些貸款永遠不會被償還。這種模式不僅注定要崩潰，而且還會耗盡股本，而股本是當時經濟擴張的基礎。所以，當這些事情發生時，在我看來，經濟思想危機

我們必須麵對這樣一個事實：未來的世界與以前的世界不同。而一個統計預測簡單地說，隻要增加需求，

你就會得到更高的產出率，更高的潛在產出率，這種說法已經不再正確，也不是分析我們現在生活的世界的好方法。
嗯，我認為，在政策危機的背後是經濟思想危機，
從另一個角度來看，我的意思是，2015 年春天，我在雅典與亞尼斯·瓦魯法基斯在希臘共事，很明顯，我們麵對的是
一套由極其不正常的思想驅動的政策，這些思想實際上並不惡意，但在一定程度上是惡意的。
但向希臘提供的是一個複蘇計劃，一個可以恢複希臘經濟競爭力的計劃，這與任何實地人士都能看到的現實完全不符。
毫無疑問，目前世界上存在這種情況。
希臘人無法通過削減工資來吸引德國工業來到雅典，他們也無法通過削減工資來吸引中國工業。
因此，他們被困在工業發展的兩極之間，而像希臘這樣的小國要想繁榮，就必須進行不同類型的投資。
它必須采取不同類型的戰略，並且必須擁有支持該戰略的資源。
他們沒有承認這一點，甚至不願意麵對這一點。
相反，國際貨幣基金組織、歐盟委員會，尤其是歐洲中央銀行的經濟學家為希臘提出的是一個方案，與在印度尼西亞、韓國和他們實施計劃的其他地方嚐試過但失敗的方案完全相同。
因此，他們一心想保持自己的想法，因為他們已經投入了這些想法，而不是適應現實情況。盡管任何擁有更多基於現實觀點的人，包括國際貨幣基金組織的理事，都清楚地告訴他們，這是一個注定要失敗的計劃。
前幾天我讀到一句話，如果你對新思想感興趣，就讀舊書，去圖書館，挑出那些絕對不在你的閱讀清單上的東西，然後讀它們。
這會讓你有所收獲。事實上，我在德克薩斯州的課堂上就是這麽做的。
我們有斯密、李嘉圖、馬克思，但特別是凡勃倫、熊彼特、凱恩斯和我的父親。這讓學生們感受到經濟學在有用的時候是怎樣的。這是一門對社會和經濟秩序進行深刻批判的學科，通過批判來理解問題所在，它讓人們做好準備，至少是少數人，在危機來臨時，你確實需要有人的專業知識，至少要有一定程度的統計或數學訓練，以了解如何處理經濟係統產生的數字，以及如何靈活地處理它們。

ctivity than the previous waves of technological development.
The automobiles replaced the horses and brought activities like transportation,
appliances brought activities like all kinds of cleaning and so forth, and cooking into the market sphere.
The digital technologies have tend to move things out of the market sphere
by making communications for example basically a fixed cost exercise,no marginal cost,no extra contribution to the gross product.
And so this is something we need to come to grips with because it reduces among other things the share of investment in GDP.
The fact that investment comes from imported capital goods means that you get an import offset.
And so we see a low share of investment,less need for commercial construction.
to go with that kind of investment,and an economy, which is shifting to being driven by consumption rather than by the cycle of investment.
Much what we've seen in the last I think 10 years,strongly suggests that this was the correct analysis.And the fourth thing was this,what happened to the financial system.
The banks in my view were fundamentally broken by the business models that they adopted,and pursued in the run up to the great crisis.They moved from what they had been doing in the Post-War period, which substantially financing business investment
to financing consumer loans and mortgages, and to doing so on an increasingly decrepit,
fraudulent business model.
Decrepit and fraudulent in the sense that they were
in the run up to the crisis,making vast numbers of loans,vast volumes of loans,that they knew,or should have known,would never be repaid.
And this was a model which was destined not only to collapse,but also to deplete the equity,which was the foundation for economic expansion up to that point.
So, when these things happen,The crisis of economic ideas it seems to me
we have to come to grips with the fact that the world going forward is not the same
as the world that existed before.
And a statistical projection that says simply,well, you just add to demand,
you'll get a higher rate of output, higher rate of potential output isn't correct anymore, isn't a good way to analyze the world that we're now living in.
Well, I think there is a crisis of economic ideas underlies the crisis of policy,
and to take this into another sphere, I mean, I was working with Yanis Varoufakis in Greece in the Athens spring of 2015, and it was very clear that we were up against
a body of policy that was driven by profoundly dysfunctional ideas to the extent that they weren't actually malicious, which they were to a degree.
But the notion that what was being offered to Greece was a recovery program, something which would restore the competitiveness of the Greek economy was just profoundly out of sync with the reality that anybody on the ground could see.
There's no question in the world that presently exists.
The Greeks cannot attract German industry to Athens by cutting their wages, and they can't attract the Chinese industry either by cutting their wages.
So, they're stuck between these poles of industrial development, and in order for a small country like Greece to prosper, it has to have investment of different kind.
It has to have a strategy of a different kind, and it has to have the resources to back that up.
There was no recognition,no willingness even to confront this.
Instead what the economists of the IMF, and the European Commission, and especially the European Central Bank were advancing for Greece was a formula, exactly the same kind of formula that tried and failed in Indonesia, tried and failed in Korea, and every place else where they run a program.
And so, they were intent upon maintaining their ideas because they were invested in them, not in adjusting to the realities of the situation. Even though anybody who had a more, let's say reality based view, including directors of the IMF were clearly telling them that this was a program destined to fail.
There's a remark I read the other day, Reading old books if you're interested in new ideas, read old books, go to the library, pick out the things which are definitely not on your reading list, and read them.
That will get you somewhere. And I do this actually with my classes in Texas.
We have Smith, Ricardo, Marx, but especially Veblen, Schumpeter, Canes, my father. And this gives the students a sense of just how economics was when it was a useful subject. It was a discipline that was invested in a kind of profound sense of criticism of the social and economic order, understanding through criticism of what the problems were, and it prepared people,at least a few people who were at least ready to be useful when there were crises, and you actually needed to have someone's expertise.
And that plus a certain amount of I think it is essential to have a certain amount of statistical or mathematical training to understand how you can deal with the kind of numbers that economic systems generate, and to deal with them flexib

這也是當前教育的一個巨大缺陷，因為你學到了什麽？你學到了某種代數，它旨在構建方程係統，你可以將其放入期刊文章中，你還學到了某種統計學，它本質上是用於處理抽樣調查。
這就是經濟學家，特別是微觀經濟學家所認為的處理方式。
現在，新發展經濟學家開始進行隨機對照試驗。
好吧，你有統計學上的顯著差異，你有答案。好吧，在現實世界中，為了運行一個係統，你需要衡量該係統的運行情況。
你需要能夠處理國民收入賬戶，也需要處理工業賬戶、就業賬戶和係統的其他功能。
並能夠以建設性的方式使用這些數據。
回到德克薩斯大學不平等項目，我們所做的方法論上很有趣，就是利用大量被忽視的數據，這些數據繼續由世界各地的公共機構生成，並表明，為了研究不平等問題，這種方法非常有用、非常可靠，而且比等待、資助一項調查和一項大規模調查，
並等待結果出來要便宜得多，也更及時。
因此，我們能夠發現，2000 年後，由於新自由主義的退卻，拉丁美洲的不平等現象有所減少，這比其他人開始發表這方麵的文章要早得多。
我們能夠在調查顯示中國出現轉折點的數年前就確定中國的情況，而且我們隻是使用中國和拉丁美洲國家定期發布的數據。
因此，從某種意義上說，某種處於邊緣的技術培訓可能對更多人非常有用，如果你按照這種思路繼續下去，你會從中得到更多有用的研究。我沒有花很多時間去改革我認為本質上沒有改革的經濟學專業。
我在一所公共政策學院任職，非常感謝。從這個角度來看，我認為大學有必要創建較小的自治單位，不一定是政策學院，但你可以有社會經濟學係、政治經濟學係。
這類機構是自治的，不依賴於同樣狹隘的晉升等級。這樣你就會開始有多元化的觀點。你開始擁有一些經濟學家認為的健康係統的標誌，也就是所謂的競爭，而這在當今的經濟學專業中顯然是缺失的。

ly. And that also is a big deficiency by the way of the current education, because what do you get? You get a certain kind of algebra, which is intended to build equations systems that you can put in journal articles, and you've got a certain kind of statistics, which is intended to deal with sample surveys essentially.
That's what economists, particularly micro economists are considered to be the way of dealing.
And now the new development economists with their randomized controlled trials.
Okay, you have statistically significant differences,you have an answer.Well, in the real world,in order to run a system,you need to have measures of how that system is performing.
You need to be able to deal with the national income accounts, but also with the industrial accounts, and the employment accounts,and the other features of the system.
And to be able to use that data in a constructive way.
And to come back to the University of Texas Inequality Project,what we did which was methodologically interesting was to take up this vast neglected body of data, which continues to be generated by public agencies all over the world,and to show that for the purpose of studying inequality was only very useful, very reliable, but much cheaper, and much more up to date than waiting, funding a survey and a vast survey,
and waiting for the results to come in.
So, we were able to find the decline in inequality in Latin America as a result of the retreat from neo liberalism following 2000 well before anybody else started publishing on that.
We were able to identify the turning points in China years before the survey showed that they were there, and was just using the data that the Chinese were publishing on a regular basis, and the Latin American countries were.
So, there is a sense in which a certain kind of technical training which has been on the fringe, could be very useful for a larger number of people, and you'd get a lot more useful research out of it if you proceeded along those lines.I've not spent a lot of my time in attempts to reform what I consider to be essentially unreformed economics profession.
I've got my appointment in a public policy school,thank you very much.and what I think is necessary from that standpoint is for universities to create smaller autonomous units,not necessarily policy schools, but you could have a department of social economics, department of political economics.
This kind of thing that were autonomous, and that were not dependent on the same narrow hierarchy of promotion.So then you begin to have a diversity of views.You begin to have what some economists consider to be the sign of a healthy system, namely it's called competition, something which is manifestly absent inside the economics profession these days.