好英语网“如果经济学家这么聪明，为什么他们不富有？”
After I wrote a newsletter last month on how economists’ views differ from those of ordinary people, I got emails to the effect of, “If economists are so smart, why ain’t they rich?” I’m not an economist, so the question doesn’t ruffle my feathers. The possible explanations, though, are interesting — sometimes funny, sometimes kind of deep. Here are five theories.
上个月我写了一篇通讯讲经济学家的观点与普通人有何不同，之后收到一些电子邮件，大意是“如果经济学家这么聪明，为什么他们不富有？”我不是经济学家，所以我没有被这个问题激怒。不过，一些可能的解释很有趣——有时很好笑，有时有点深奥。以下是五个理论。
1. Economists aren’t trying to be rich. A lot of economists go to work for institutions of government and higher education. You don’t go to work for such employers because you aspire to vast riches. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wages of economists in May 2021 were $105,630. That’s lower than the median pay of astronomers, nuclear engineers, medical dosimetrists and theatrical and performance makeup artists.
1. 经济学家没有想要变得富有。许多经济学家为政府机构和高等教育机构工作。如果你向往巨额财富，你就不会去为这样的雇主工作。根据美国劳工统计局的数据，2021年5月经济学家的年薪中位数为105630美元。这低于天文学家、核工程师、医疗剂量师以及舞台表演化妆师的工资中位数。
Nobody asks Trappist monks why they aren’t rich, because it’s understood that getting rich is not their aspiration. Economics likewise offers rewards beyond money. There’s a joke on Quora about a bunch of investment bankers who ask an economics professor why he isn’t rich if he’s so smart. He asks them why they aren’t smart if they’re so rich.
没有人问特拉普派的僧侣他们为什么不富有，因为众所周知，致富不是他们的愿望。经济学同样提供超越金钱的回报。Quora上有一个笑话，一群投资银行家问一位经济学教授，如果他这么聪明，为什么他不富有。他问他们，既然他们这么有钱，为什么他们不聪明。
2. Economists are too good at economics. Learning a little economics is useful for a lot of lucrative careers, from management to banking. Warren Buffett, Steven Cohen, Kenneth Griffin, Henry Kravis and Elon Musk are among the billionaires who have bachelor or master degrees in economics. The mistake is loving it so much that you get your doctorate and become an impoverished postdoc or assistant professor. It’s the same with the hard sciences. In “My Life as a Quant,” the theoretical physicist Emanuel Derman writes that he didn’t start making real money until he realized he would never be a world-famous physicist and went to work on Wall Street, where his math skills were in great demand.
2. 经济学家太擅长经济学了。学习一点经济学对从管理到银行业等许多收入颇丰的职业都很有用。沃伦·巴菲特、史蒂文·科恩、肯尼斯·格里芬、亨利·克拉维斯和伊隆·马斯克都是拥有经济学学士或硕士学位的亿万富翁。但经济学家错在太热爱经济学，以至于获得了博士学位并成为了贫困的博士后或助理教授。自然科学也是如此。理论物理学家伊曼纽尔·德曼在《一个计量金融大师在华尔街》(My Life as a Quant)中写道，他意识到自己永远不会成为世界著名的物理学家后，去了非常需要他的数学能力的华尔街工作，直到这时他才开始真正赚钱。
3. Economists aren’t actually smart. I don’t buy this one. I think that economists are smart. But some — not the good ones — can be blindered. They know their subspecialties well but are weak on others, such as economic history. These economists have technical expertise but not wisdom.
3. 经济学家实际上并不聪明。但我不这么认为。我认为经济学家很聪明。但有些经济学家——不是优秀的那些——可能存在盲点。他们很了解自己的子专业，但在其他方面很薄弱，例如经济史。这些经济学家有技术专长，但没有智慧。
4. Economists are hamstrung by the “efficient market hypothesis.” There’s a joke about a young economist who stoops to pick up a $20 bill he sees on the sidewalk. An older colleague tells him not to bother because if there were really a $20 bill there, someone would have picked it up already. Devotion to the efficient markets hypothesis — which assumes that prices reflect all available information — discourages economists from trying to beat the market, and that’s why they never get rich.
4. 经济学家被“有效市场假说”束缚住了手脚。有个笑话说，一位年轻的经济学家弯腰捡起他在人行道上看到的一张20美元钞票。一位年长的同事告诉他不要高兴得太早，因为如果那里真的有20美元的钞票，早就有人捡了。致力于有效市场假说——假设价格反映了所有可用信息——让经济学家不会试图更胜市场一筹，这就是他们永远不会致富的原因。
5. Economists do think they can beat the market, but they’re wrong. A great example of this is Long-Term Capital Management, a heralded hedge fund that included a pair of Nobel economics laureates, Robert Merton and Myron Scholes. It went bust in spectacular fashion in 1998.
5. 经济学家确实认为他们可以更胜一筹，但他们错了。一个很好的例子是一家名为“长期资本管理”的公司，这是一家备受瞩目的对冲基金，拥有两位诺贝尔经济学奖获得者——罗伯特·默顿和迈伦·斯科尔斯。公司在1998年以惊人的方式破产。
Deirdre McCloskey, an economist who wrote a 1990 book titled “If You’re So Smart: The Narrative of Economic Expertise,” wrote to me in an email that when she was at the University of Chicago in the 1970s, senior faculty members were speculating in the bond market. Milton Friedman told her that interest rates were bound to fall. “This was when interest rates were at 6 percent,” she wrote. “They in fact rose to 10 percent” soon after, “and the wise economists lost their shirts.”
迪尔德丽·麦克洛斯基——一位在1990年著有《经济学家的叙事：如果你那么聪明》(If You’re So Smart: The Narrative of Economic Expertise)一书的经济学家——在一封电子邮件中告诉我，1970年代在芝加哥大学时，资深教员们正在投机债券市场。米尔顿·弗里德曼告诉她，利率必然会下降。“当时利率为6%，”她写道。不久之后“实际上升到了10%”，“深谋远虑的经济学家们输得精光。”
Warren Buffett, despite earning a master of science degree in economics from Columbia University in 1951, told a CNBC interviewer in 2016, “I don’t pay any attention to what economists say, frankly.” He added: “You have all these economists with these 160 IQs who spent their life studying it. Can you name me one super-wealthy economist who’s ever made money out of securities?”
沃伦·巴菲特在1951年获得了哥伦比亚大学经济学硕士学位，即便如此，他在2016年对CNBC的采访者说：“坦率地说，我并不在意经济学家怎么说。”他补充说：“有那么多智商160的经济学家穷极一生研究经济学。你能说出有哪位经济学家曾经通过在证券市场赚钱成为超级富豪吗？”
Buffett said that the great British economist John Maynard Keynes failed repeatedly as an investor when he tried to use the credit cycle to predict what businesses would do and succeeded when he gave up on that and “settled on buying good businesses cheap,” Buffett’s own approach.
巴菲特说，伟大的英国经济学家约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯作为投资者屡屡失败，他试图利用信贷周期来预测企业的行动，而当他放弃这一方式并“决定以低价购买优质企业”时，他成功了，而巴菲特本人用的就是这种方法。
Buffett is right that economics isn’t an ideal way to make money as an investor. On the other hand, that’s not what it’s for. It’s a science of means and ends. Let economists be economists!
巴菲特是对的，经济学并不是作为投资者赚钱的理想方式。另一方面，这也不是经济学的用途。这是一门关于手段和目的的科学。让经济学家做经济学家吧！