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[【其它】] 一代宗师弗里德曼

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发表于 2006-11-22 03:30:29 | 显示全部楼层 |阅读模式
作者:英国《金融时报》塞缪尔•布里坦(Samuel Brittan)
2006年11月20日 星期一
转自 http://dm.ftchinese.com/cgi-bin14/DM/y/hVo60FZbjz0sX0KhG0EL  
  
著名美国经济学家米尔顿•弗里德曼(Milton Friedman)于2006年11月16日去世,享年94岁。他是最后一位既家喻户晓又拥有最高专业成就的伟大经济学家。在这方面,人们常常将他与约翰•梅纳德•凯恩斯(John Maynard Keynes)相提并论。弗里德曼始终对凯恩斯心怀敬意,尽管他本人在某种程度上已经取代了凯恩斯。

此外,与许多著名经济学家不同,弗里德曼赢得诺贝尔经济学奖的学术文献与他在报刊上发表的文章之间,保持了连贯性。1966年至1984年间,他每隔两周为《新闻周刊》(Newsweek)撰写的专栏,乃是运用经济分析阐明当下事件的典范。

从简单的想法中得出耐人寻味的结论

  
弗里德曼的赞赏者与批评者都指出,他的世界观本质上很简单:坚定信仰个人自由,深信自由市场是协调个人活动、实现共同富裕的最佳途径。他的闪光点在于能够从简单的想法中,得出耐人寻味而出人意料的结论。我从读者来信中得知,弗里德曼的部分吸引力在于,他愿意说出其他许多人想到、但不敢说出来的逆耳忠言。然后,他还会继续捍卫这些主张,对抗“经济正确”(economic correctness)的强大势力;而在捍卫自己见解的过程中,他几乎是无意识地增长了知识。

有人曾想把弗里德曼贬低为右翼共和党人,但弗里德曼对各种激进事业的拥护,使他们打消了念头。在我的学生时代,我最初遇到的英国市场派经济学家信仰个人自由的主张,并没有给我留下太深的印象。直到我遇到弗里德曼,得知他花在游说抵制美国征兵制度上的时间,比其它任何政策课题都要多时,我才开始认真看待市场派经济学家们言论的广泛哲学意义。

弗里德曼对传统的反叛,经受了岁月的流逝。他认为,禁毒法律无异于政府为有组织犯罪提供补贴。即使是在金融领域,他赞成将指数化合约和税收等作为减轻通胀损害的手段,这让他无法得到传统保守派的钟爱。

但是,弗里德曼采取这些立场,并非是在有意识地寻求政治平衡,而是遵循理性辩论的结果。与同样赞成自由市场资本主义的弗里德里希•哈耶克(Friedrich Hayek)不同,他没有那么大的耐心,去揭示可能深藏在代代相传的态度、规定和偏见中的真理。

没有一点教授的架子

弗里德曼没有一点教授的架子。这位身材矮小的健谈者,更喜欢说而不喜欢写,面对电视仿佛如鱼得水。他在与妻子罗斯(Rose)合著的《自由选择》(Free to Choose)一书中,添加了很多没有出现在电视版中的细节内容。但书中没有系统的论文,只有一些整理成文的演讲注释,概括了“弗里德曼经济学说”和“弗里德曼货币政策学说”。

被弗里德曼意想不到的魅力所折服的人,有时会低估他的决心。当有人怀疑他的信念时,他不会作出丝毫让步。尽管他秉性谦虚,在本质上信奉民主,但他也有普通人的一面 —— 他在下半生意识并喜爱自己的盛名。

乐观的美国人

他对政治程序的态度,和那些批评现有制度的公共选择(Public Choice)理论者是一致的。这些人认为,议员们在一个有严重缺陷的政治市场追求自身利益,在这个市场,代表地域和行业特殊利益的集团以公众利益为代价得到好处。但弗里德曼深信,理性与劝说的力量,总能战胜理论上的疑虑。虽然他偶尔也会对自由的前景表示担心,但这类不祥的预感更多还是属于他在“朝圣山学社”(Mont Pelerin Society)结识的中欧人。弗里德曼本人从头到脚都是一个乐观的美国人。

早年生平

弗里德曼的职业生涯,可说是典型的美国成功故事。他1912年生于纽约一个贫苦的移民家庭,父亲在他15岁时就去世了,但他仍得以到罗格斯大学(Rutgers)和芝加哥大学就读。上世纪30年代,他先后供职于各种研究机构,并与美国国家经济研究局(National Bureau of Economic Research)建立了联系,这种关系一直持续到1981年,该机构为他一些最重要的工作提供了资助。

1938年,弗里德曼与罗斯•戴瑞克特(Rose Director)结婚。罗斯本人也是一位经济学家,是弗里德曼一些较为通俗的著作的合著者。亲密的家庭关系是他一个重要的灵感来源。在他的家庭圈子中,妻子的哥哥艾伦•戴瑞克特(Aaron Director)也是一位经济学家,虽然著述不多,但他的学识在弗里德曼的圈子内备受重视。弗里德曼的儿子戴维 (David)最初不想子承父业,于是当了一名物理学家,但他最终发现社会经济学主张的诱惑太大,无法抵挡。对于戴维选择进入“无政府资本主义”(anarchocapitalism)领域,宁愿在这一领域探索,也不愿回归传统左派经济学道路,父亲弗里德曼表现出高度的容忍。

二战期间,弗里德曼不仅在美国财政部的税务部门供职,还在哥伦比亚大学(Columbia University)战争研究部的统计研究组工作过一段时间。他于1946年成为芝加哥大学(Chicago University)的经济学教授,在那里一直工作到退休。弗里德曼最早从事的是数理统计工作,他帮助开创的一些统计方法,例如抽样法,一直延用至今。

他首部受到广泛欢迎的著作于1945年出版,是与西蒙•库兹涅茨(Simon Kuznets)合著的对独立职业活动收入进行的研究。两位作者发现,国家控制进入医生行业的人数,使医疗费用高企,损害了患者利益。这些发现一直让医生们不适。

弗里德曼的第二部著作《实证经济学论文集》(Essays in Positive Economics)于1953年出版,其中包含一篇有关方法论的著名论文。尽管许多经济理论中对人性过于简单的看法,令其他许多经济学家感到尴尬,但弗里德曼的个性意味着,他是不会对此表示歉疚的。他宣称,无论是自然科学还是社会科学,理论的成效,取决于其产生的预测成功与否,而非其假设在描述上是否逼真。

关于树叶分布的命题

他的一个著名例证是这样一个命题:一棵树上树叶的分布,是为了追求落在树叶上的阳光面积的最大化。该理论的价值取决于树叶的分布是否符合这种预测,而不取决于树木是否做出了有意识的努力。

这篇论文引发的争议至今仍在延续,想必其消耗的纸张已导致大片森林被砍伐。但弗里德曼把发表的宣言留给他人去争论,自己更关心的是如何将理论运用到实践中。同样,在后期倡导资本主义的论述中,他陈述了自己的价值观,并列举出佐证,但终究没有去探讨自由、公正和国家等方面的理论。

弗里德曼的方法,为许多自由市场资本主义的学术捍卫者带来一缕新鲜空气。这些学者以前感到,相对于宣称自己符合未来潮流、希望用自己的方法规划和干预经济的计量经济学家和其他定量研究人员,自己就像是脱离实际的空想家。而今终于出现了一个可以和任何年轻怪才相媲美、而且脚步比他们中的大多数都快的人,这个人站在自由市场的一边,实际上,他比其他多数支持者都更加没有保留和顾虑。

尽管弗里德曼的政策观点当时不受欢迎,但他与战后的凯恩斯主义者(Keynesians)说着相同的语言,将时间序列引入方程式中,为研究“货币需求”函数的经济学家提供了一个崭新的领域。的确,他的贡献是不可或缺的。因为要修正货币与价格关系的古老真理、以及国家试图通过增加支出而实现充分就业的徒劳性的古老真理,就只能“披上现代统计的外衣”。

(待续)
弗里德曼在剑桥

我初遇弗里德曼是在上世纪50年代,当时我在剑桥大学(Cambridge)读二年级,他则在这里担任客座教授。不幸的是,我不得不与另外一位学生分享他的指导,而那位学生很容易就会把他引入一般的政治谈话之中。有一天,弗里德曼来得很早,开始阅读桌上放着的一本《费边论文集》(Fabian Essays)中萧伯纳(Bernard Shaw)的文章。他说道:“开头几页有三处错误。”他指的是萧伯纳对边际生产率理论的误解。萧伯纳以为,自己能够在这一领域为读书没他多的费边社同僚提供一些指导。

尽管弗里德曼极富魅力,但我也从他那里遭到了平生最大的奚落。他向我提及亚瑟•伯恩斯(Arthur Burns)(后来的美联储(Fed)主席)写给他的一封信,信中称艾森豪威尔(Eisenhower)实际上是一位出色的总统。我对此表示惊讶,弗里德曼回答道:“首先,伯恩斯更了解艾森豪威尔。其次,就算了解程度相同,我还是更愿意接受他的观点,而不是你的。”

  

在上世纪50年代,弗里德曼更知名的是对浮动汇率的提倡,而不是货币主义。当时市场普遍对美元短缺的假象感到担忧,而弗里德曼认为,这完全是由于欧洲和其它地方的汇率过高。“的确,”他会说,“英国缺少美元——这就和每个美国公民都缺少美元一模一样。”他笑到了最后,因为在短短几年内,美元短缺的假象就变成了同样神秘的美元过剩。

直到多年以后我才知道,弗里德曼在剑桥经济系(Cambridge Economics Faculty)期间,一直被恶意排挤在许多学术生活之外。例如,当时有一个讨论资本理论的名称怪异的“秘密研讨会”。本来,如果让弗里德曼来解决一些数学难题,揭示本质,可以为这个研讨会提供极大的帮助,但是他却被排斥在外。

最让弗里德曼寒心的,是经济系中某些与他持有相同理论观点的人的狭隘态度。已故教授丹尼斯•罗伯逊爵士(Professor Sir Denis Robertson)就是其中之一。罗伯逊爵士始终对凯恩斯持保留意见,而且倡导直到几十年后才为人们普遍接受的零通胀政策。但是让弗里德曼震惊的是,罗伯逊爵士为“郡县农业委员会”(County Agricultural Committee)的权力进行了积极辩护,认为它们有权踢开它们认为效率低下的农民。于是,这位芝加哥大学的教授对英国经济学创立者的崇敬之情平添了几分困惑,对如此多当代英国人打算维护的观点感到费解。

“永久收入”(Permanent Income)与货币

在后来的职业生涯中,弗里德曼主要致力于对经济学观点进行经验主义验证。他的主要成就是1957年出版的《消费函数理论》(Theory of the Consumption Function)。这是在他1974年荣获诺贝尔奖时提及得最多的一部著作。他的调查起因于一个众所周知的悖论。数据似乎表明,随着收入的增加,储蓄率也会增加。但是,时间序列(time series)数据显示,长期储蓄率的变动要小得多。对这个谜题的解释是,支出和储蓄决策取决于人们对自己长期(“永久”)收入的看法;人们往往不会根据短暂的收入变化对支出和储蓄进行调整。

这些发现至少包含弗里德曼推崇的两层含意。一个是,资本主义最终不会因为消费不足而出现停滞不前的长期趋势。另一个是,财政微调会非常困难,因为消费者会忽略政府预算收紧或放宽导致的暂时性可支配收入变化。的确,英国财政大臣肯尼斯•克拉克(Kenneth Clarke)1994年的增税措施没有产生人们广泛预期的衰退后果,这正是其中的原因所在。弗里德曼的消费函数在融合理论与数据方面如此彻底而又令人信服,说服了许多不赞同其政治含义的经济学家。

直到上世纪50年代末和60年代,弗里德曼才发展出货币主义学说,并因此一举成名。他将货币视为一种资产,公众持有这种资产的意愿取决于收入水平、利率和预期通货膨胀率。如果货币供应增加,那么最初的效果将会是提高实际产出和收入水平,但最终的结果将是或多或少地按比例提高价格。这就是著名的“长期、多变的滞后” (Long and Variable Lags):一般情况下,需要9个月才会对实际产出和收入水平产生影响,再过9个月,对价格的主要影响才会体现出来。这些时间周期经常被引用,也经常被嘲笑,但它们并非弗里德曼的核心思想。

反货币主义者通常的反应是,货币供应会对薪资膨胀或政府赤字等事件做出被动调整。尽管虽然这种现象有时会出现,但弗里德曼需要确定,情况并非总是如此。有时候货币扮演着活性剂的角色,无论原因是黄金流入、官方放松货币政策,还是试图维持某一特定的汇率等。

货币历史和货币主义

弗里德曼曾在一本书中力求全面展现货币的积极作用,那就是《美国货币史,1867年至1960年》(A Monetary History of the US, 1867-1960)。该书由弗里德曼和安娜•施瓦茨(Anna Schwartz)合著,于1963年出版。这是弗里德曼的技巧之一,他总能为某项具体的工作找到一位恰当的合作者。《美国货币史》是弗里德曼的一项杰作。书中几乎没有公式,即便是对书中提出的学说持反对观点、或是对其漠不关心的人,将本书作为历史书来研读,也会为他们带来愉悦,并从中受益。本书符合弗里德曼的一贯特点,其本意是如实记录美国的货币供应历史,结果却找到了如此之多的问题,发现了如此之多的新材料,其较大的篇幅本身就多多少少说明了这一点。

这两位作者后来采用了基于方程式的更正式的方法进行研究,关注于周期平均值,并涵盖了英国的数据,但却没有那么成功。两位作者遇到了诸多障碍,研究结果直到1982年才出炉;他们自己也承认,实在不值得付出这么多努力。他们尤其后悔花时间对英国进行分析,这些分析没有为他们带来多少新的突破。围绕这本新著作的学术辩论又过了近10年才展开,其中的部分原因在于,英国的反撒切尔(Thatcher)势力试图将弗里德曼批评者的分析用于自己的政治目的。总有一天,内情将会曝光。

弗里德曼做出的政策结论是其著名的货币供应政策:年复一年稳定的货币供应增长。他承认,这不是唯一一个可以从货币主义理论中得出的政策。但是,随着金融资产的激增以及随之而来的大量对货币的不同定义,几乎所有的货币主义策略都遭遇了困境。上世纪90年代初,一些货币主义学家指责美联储(Fed)政策过紧,压制了美国经济的发展,但与此同时,其它货币主义学家则批评美联储扩张过快。

弗里德曼本人有时会给人留下这样的印象:无论一家央行做什么,都是错的。若想得到他的青睐,央行不仅要追求货币目标,而且在追求目标时还要采用一种名为货币基础控制(monetary base control)的特殊方式;当美联储1979年至1982年期间尝试采用这种方法时,外界谴责它把作用机制弄错了。

(待续)
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 楼主| 发表于 2006-11-22 03:33:25 | 显示全部楼层
续:

通胀与失业之间不存在取舍关系

一些经济学家会认为,弗里德曼对宏观经济学最重要的贡献,并非他对货币主义的专业研究,而是在他1967年担任美国经济协会(American Economic Association)会长时发表的就职演说。他在演说中论证:通胀与失业之间存在取舍关系的观点是错误的,这种观点以菲利普斯曲线(Phillips curve)的名义主导着当时的学术界,而且似乎为决策者提供了一系列政策选择。假定一国政府或央行试图以接受更高的通胀率为代价来增加产出和就业。一旦市场参与者开始将对通胀的考虑纳入行为中,经济最终将回到此前的失业率水平,但通胀率却上去了。如果政府还是坚持追求过高的就业目标,其结果将不仅仅是通胀,而且是任何社会都不可能长期忍受的加速通胀。

弗里德曼的这套学说有时被称作垂直的菲利普斯曲线,有时被称作加速主义假说,也有时被称作“自然失业率”。自然失业率指的是,在确定了稳定的通胀率后,经济中的失业率水平。后来,一些使用者将其更名为无加速通胀的失业率(non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment, Nairu),以摒弃其“自然”或“不可避免”的外表。

  实际上,使我放弃战后凯恩斯主义的,正是这些有关无加速通胀的失业率(Nairu)的观点,而不是弗里德曼更为专业的货币主义理论。人们如今对这些基础理论已经很熟悉,但在当时,对于英国的经济界和美国东海岸的许多经济学家而言,这些理论极具爆炸性。

一些经济学家将无加速通胀的失业率视为技术学派的一个新概念,他们将其用于更复杂的需求管理形式。这违背了弗里德曼就职演说的精神。弗里德曼在演说中显然是打算警告政府:不要试图通过增加开支来实现预定的就业水平。英国首相卡拉汉(Callaghan)1976年在工党(Labour Party)大会上发表的演说,让弗里德曼的理论在英国得到了广泛认可。卡拉汉警告人们,不要相信政府通过增加支出,就能实现充分就业的观点。

然而,让那些对宏观经济而非货币主义理论感兴趣的人略感失望的是,弗里德曼在他更受欢迎的著作中,没有更多运用无加速通胀的失业率概念。的确,他有时似乎也会过分延伸自己的学说,将经济衰退的责任归咎于货币供应增长的短期变化。他对此的苛刻程度,不亚于任何一个凯恩斯主义者。

对撒切尔夫人的影响

弗里德曼对玛格丽特•撒切尔(Margaret Thatcher)产生的直接影响比人们通常想象的要小。尽管两人在1979年大选前的一个私人晚宴上相识,但彼此并不熟悉。这位英国前首相在回忆录中只是顺便提了一下弗里德曼。如她所述,她的灵感来自哈耶克(Hayek)。

然而,弗里德曼对她手下的许多顾问和大臣都产生了明显(即使是间接的)影响。英国上世纪80年代的中期财政战略(Medium Term Financial Strategy)将目标定为:逐渐减少货币供应增量,放弃政府的“微调”,这显然或多或少取自于弗里德曼的观点。

但这位经济大师本人不赞成中期财政战略,因为英国央行(Bank of England)对货币供应量的调节仍是通过利率而不是货币基础。此外,他不相信减少预算赤字会对利率产生巨大影响,而且他认为,无论从哪个角度讲,减少预算赤字都不应在中期财政战略中占有如此显著的位置。然而,从更广的范围看,没有弗里德曼的著作和电视演讲,撒切尔政府不会获得少数学界精英对其极为有限的认可。

退休后仍工作

自上世纪70年代末以来,弗里德曼一直居住在旧金山。他显然很享受自己“工作的退休生活”:这里气候比较温和,他很容易就能抵达在斯坦福大学(Stanford)胡佛研究所(Hoover Institution)的办公室。罗斯对这次搬家比他还高兴。

弗里德曼的这种现代性意味着,他的技术成果很容易受到新研究者的攻击,这些研究者声称要用更新的统计方法批驳他的成果。的确,在他的有生之年,弗里德曼看到了对将经济学基于可发现的数字关系的反对,也看到了所谓的奥地利方法的复兴,这种方法致力于用生物学和语言学的方式,来预测互动系统的总体特征。但是,如果没有弗里德曼先从科学高地上驱逐集体主义者(collectivists),就不可能在不同流派的自由市场经济学家之间展开运用方法论的对话。

在他的后半生,弗里德曼与基于理性预期和快速市场清算的新古典经济学(New Classical Economics)保持着距离。他担心,经济学家已陷入了对数学严谨与数学优美的追寻,而不再将其作为研究工具。

在货币理论之外,弗里德曼依然是一位主流经济学家。就像他在《资本主义与自由》(Capitalism and Freedom,1962年出版,本意是为了对《自由选择》进行更深入的研究)一书中所写到的,他无法明确而快速地界定政府干预的局限。但他相信,对个案的客观研究,加之对个人选择的基本信念,通常会让辩论向有利于市场提供(private provision)的方向发展。然而,他的朋友亚伦•华特爵士(Sir Alan Walters)遗憾地表示,弗里德曼在下半生将主要精力投入了货币主义领域,而没有更多涉足其它领域的学术工作。

弗里德曼本人将自由市场和货币主义理论的胜出,归因于对70年代政府支出飙升和高通胀后果的滞后认识。然而,只要反应是连贯的和理性的,多数功劳就一定要归给他。当然,自由市场政策的成功也带来了新的问题;若能让30岁的米尔顿•弗里德曼重生,对这些新挑战进行评论和分析,我们有什么不可以付出呢?

译者/何黎
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 楼主| 发表于 2006-11-22 06:07:18 | 显示全部楼层
逝者:伟大的经济学家弗里德曼

http://blog.tianya.cn/blogger/po ... 67104&hotid=922??

                 李华芳
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??只是个经济学家的经济学家就不可能成为一位伟大的经济学家。——F·A·哈耶克
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??一早就收到胡佛研究所的消息,晨光打在玻璃窗上,没有暖意全是冬日的清冷。想起前几日还在读他的《货币的祸害》,写了一个书评,向这位伟大的"反凯恩斯主义者"致敬。仿佛一眨眼的工夫,就听到了他离去的消息。
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??他已经94岁了,再一次印证了经济学家较为长寿的"传言"。屈指算来,离他得到诺贝尔经济学奖也已经有30年了。获得诺贝尔奖之后,他进入胡佛研究所直至今日。人们常说,诺奖总是迟到的,今年的诺贝尔经济学奖获得者菲尔普斯的工作,让人重新回想起那段过往的历史。从上个世纪 30年代开始,出于对大萧条的恐惧,凯恩斯主义被广为接受。在凯恩斯如日中天的时候,提出异见的结果可想而知。
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??不过他还是秉承自己高中时的几何老师的教诲:"美即真理,真理即美——一切尽在此,这世上你们每人都知道,你们每人所必须知道的也尽在此。"那位老师总是在证明定理之后,总是引用这几句济慈在《希腊古瓮咏》( Ode on a Grecian Urn)中的诗句。所以他坚持认为虽然凯恩斯看到的通胀问题是存在的,但是其解释以及政策结论却是错误的。他认为通货膨胀起源于"太多的货币追逐太少的商品"。因此政府唯一要做的就是调节货币数量而不是动用其他的手段。他几乎是赤手空拳出来应战,好在那个不幸年代里他最终赢得了幸运,罗纳德·里根与玛格丽塔· 撒切尔在80年代接受他的思想,开始大规模放松管制,迎来了一波新增长。
??
??他甚至想把这种思想推销给当时的中国领导人,在1980年和1988年两度访华,为中国改革出谋划策。他不远万里来到中国,答案只有一个:他对中国有一点真诚的关心。但其后一年,政治上的风波使得中国错失良机。张五常后来在《背影》一文中深情回忆到送别之时,"那时晨光熹微,雾相当大,但太阳的光还是穿雾而过……在雾中淡淡的阳光下看到他夫妇的背影,那短短的身材仿佛变得越来越高。"
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??十年后,在150名经济学家投票中,尽管凯恩斯被评为20世纪"最有影响力"的经济学家,而他排名第二。不过历史最终倒向了他, 90年代中国所走的道路,包括解除价格管制、国有企业改革等,正是他1988年给中共中央的备忘录中的建议。
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??由于凯恩斯主义背后蕴含的政府干预思想可能"通向奴役之路",因此他和哈耶克一道成为了反对凯恩斯主义的坚强同盟。他与其夫人的"自由选择"系列演讲,甚至深深打动了最为古板的英国人。他在《商业周刊》的文章,也让美国人更好了解了"资本主义与自由"的关系。自由主义的理念在全世界的广泛传播有他的功劳。他与哈耶克对自由的坚持在 90年代末获得了世人的尊敬。而朝圣山学社的成立,也使两人的友谊更为深厚。他们与斯蒂格勒、迪雷科特、科斯等人一起,为芝加哥学派的形成奠定了基础,并使之发扬光大。
??
??他与朋友们总是倾心相交。他经常与斯蒂格勒散步,并不忌讳走在身材高大的斯蒂格勒身边。他与迪雷科特的妹妹相识相爱,迪雷科特曾经开玩笑的回忆自己想找一个妹夫,觉得这个小伙子还不错就有意撮合。而对于科斯而言,最难忘的莫过于那场去芝加哥惊心动魄的辩论。科斯去阐述自己的社会成本与交易费用理论,所有的芝加哥人都听不懂他在说什么,是他在人群中高喊"我们都错了,科斯是对的"。
??
??历经两次世界大战的他,与他的挚爱罗斯一起,在20世纪末推出了他们的回忆录《两个幸运的人》。他们这样命名自己的书,平淡从容,气定神闲。那些岁月并不算是特别好的年代,对生为犹太裔移民的他们而言,尤其如此。不过这似乎也意味着另外一种更大的幸运,在困难时候得来的幸福更让鼓舞和温暖人心。罗斯回忆第一次约会,他想吻她,她拒绝了。幸运的是他没有放弃。看两个老人走过的半个多世纪的路程,尽管那属于他们自己的路,自己的诉说,仍旧不可避免的因为其中的神奇和温婉给人以感人至深的力量。
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??4年前,他90岁生日,世界上各个角落的自由主义者都向这位伟大旗手致敬。当然他的个性鲜明,树敌在所难免。但最终赢得了凯恩斯传人的尊敬。哈佛一直是凯恩斯主义的大本营,但劳伦斯 ·萨默斯在90年代回忆说:"在我年轻时他是魔鬼般的人物。只是随着时间的推移,我才开始勉强地对他产生尊敬。而随着时间的进一步流逝,我对他的尊敬越来越发自内心。"
??
??他在圣安东尼奥(San Antonio)的三一大学(Trinity University)的"诺贝尔之路"的演讲中说:"身为一位经济学者,成为我生命中喜悦与满足的源泉。经济学是一门迷人的学问。而最令人着迷的是,它的基本原理如此简单,只要一张纸就可以写完,而且任何人都可以了解,然而真正了解的人又何其稀少。"对他个人的思想而言,恐怕也是如此。不过时间已经在历史中铭刻了这个伟大的名字:米尔顿 ·弗里德曼。 ??
??
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 楼主| 发表于 2006-11-22 20:53:27 | 显示全部楼层
一代宗师弗里德曼 英文原文 :

MILTON FRIEDMAN, ECONOMIST, DIES AGED 94

  
By Samuel Brittan
Monday, November 20, 2006
  
  
Milton Friedman, who has died aged 94, was the last of the great economists to combine possession of a household name with the highest professional credentials. In this respect he was often compared to John Maynard Keynes, whose work he always respected, even though he to some extent supplanted it.

Moreover, in contrast to many leading economists, Friedman maintained a continuity between his Nobel-Prize winning academic contributions and his current journalism. The columns he contributed to Newsweek every third week between 1966 and 1984 were a model of how to use economic analysis to illuminate events

Both his admirers and his detractors have pointed out that his world view was essentially simple: a passionate belief in personal freedom combined with a conviction that free markets were the best way of co-ordinating the activities of dispersed individuals to their mutual enrichment. Where he shone was in his ability to derive interesting and unexpected consequences from simple ideas. As I knew from my postbag, part of his appeal lay in his willingness to come out with home truths which had occurred to many other people who had not dared to utter them. Friedman would then go on, however, to defend these maxims against the massed forces of economic correctness; and in the course of those defences he, almost unintentionally, added to knowledge.

  
Those who wanted to write him off as a right-wing Republican were disabused by the variety of radical causes he championed. I was not impressed in my own student years by the claims to a belief in personal freedom of the pro-market British economists whom I first encountered. It was not until I came across Friedman, and learned that he had spent more time in lobbying against the US “draft” than on any other policy issue, that I began to take seriously the wider philosophic protestations of the pro-market economists.

Friedman's iconoclasm endured. He regarded the anti-drugs laws as virtually a government subsidy for organised crime. Even in the financial sphere, he espoused causes such as indexed contracts and taxes as a way of mitigating the harm done by inflation which did not endear him to natural conservatives.

But there was no self-conscious balancing of the political ticket in these positions. He adopted them by following the argument wherever it led. Unlike his fellow exponent of free market capitalism, Friedrich Hayek, he had no great patience for hidden truths that might be embedded in inherited attitudes, rules and prejudices.

There was indeed nothing of the Herr Professor about Friedman. A small voluble figure, he preferred the spoken to the written word, and he took to television as a duck to water. He came to add a good many subtleties to the book Free to Choose, which he wrote with his wife Rose, which were not in the broadcast version. But there is no systematic treatise except some written-up lecture notes outlining Friedmanite economics or even Friedmanite monetary theory.

Those who were won over by his unexpected charm sometimes underestimated his resolve. He would not give a millimetre where his convictions were at stake. Although an unassuming and essentially democratic personality, he was human enough to be aware of, and enjoy, his reputation in the last decades of his life.

His professed attitude to the political process was that of the critical Public Choice theorists. The latter believe that legislators follow their self-interest in a highly defective political marketplace in which geographical and industrially-concentrated special interest groups gain at the general expense. But Friedman's ingrained belief in the power of reason and persuasion always got the better of any such theoretical misgivings. Although he occasionally professed gloom about the future of freedom, such forebodings were best left to the central Europeans whom he met at the Mont Pelerin Society. Friedman himself was an optimistic American to his fingertips.

Early Years

His own career was an archetypical American success story. He was born in New York in 1912 to poor immigrant parents and his father died when he was 15. He nevertheless studied at Rutgers and Chicago. In the 1930s he was on the staff of various research organisations and began an association with the National Bureau of Economic Research, which lasted until 1981 and which sponsored some of his most important work.

In 1938 he married Rose Director, herself an economist who was the co-author of some of his more general books. The closeness of his family life was an important clue to the man. His family circle included his wife's brother, Aaron Director, an economist who published little but whose wisdom was much cherished in the Friedman circle. His son David, in an attempt to avoid following in his father's footsteps, became at first a physicist, but eventually found the lure of socio-economic arguments too difficult to resist. His father was highly tolerant of David's excursions into anarchocapitalism preferring deviations in that direction to lapses towards the conventional left.

During World War Two Friedman not only worked for the US Treasury on tax, but had a spell in the statistical war research group at Columbia. He became professor of economics at Chicago in 1946, where he remained until his retirement. Friedman's own earliest work was in mathematical statistics, where he helped to pioneer some methods, for instance in sampling, which are still in use.

His first work of wider appeal was a study with Simon Kuznets, published in 1945, of income from independent professional practice. The authors found that state control of entry into the medical profession kept up the level of fees to the detriment of patients. These findings never ceased to get under the skin of the profession.

Friedman's next book, Essays in Positive Economics, published in 1953, contained a famous essay on method. While many other economists were embarrassed by the over-simplified view of human nature in much economic theory, he was characteristically non-apologetic. The fruitfulness of a theory, in both the physical and the social sciences, he declared, depended on the success of the predictions which could be made with it and not on the descriptive realism of the assumptions. One of his famous examples was the proposition that the leaves of a tree spread themselves to maximise the area of sunlight falling upon them. The value of the theory depended on whether the layout of the leaves corresponded to this prediction and not on whether the tree made any such conscious effort.

This essay generated a still-running controversy which has consumed many acres of forest. But Friedman, having issued his manifesto, left others to argue about it and was more concerned to apply it in practice. Similarly, in his later expositions of the case for capitalism, he stated his own values, and cited corroborative evidence, but resisted the temptation to argue about theories of freedom, justice, the state and so on.

Friedman's methods came as a breath of fresh air to many of the academic defenders of market capitalism who had previously felt themselves to be beleaguered armchair thinkers in contrast to the econometricians and other quantitative researchers who claimed to be the wave of the future and wanted to use their methods for planning and intervention. Here at last was somebody who could hold his own with the most advanced of whiz kids and was quicker on his feet than most of them, but who was on the side of the market indeed with far fewer reservations and qualifications than most of its other supporters.

Despite the unfashionable nature of his policy views, Friedman spoke the same language as the post-war Keynesians, fitted equations to time series and provided a new field for economists in the investigation of “demand for money” functions. Indeed, his contribution was essential. For if age-old verities about the relations between money and prices, or the futility of nations trying to spend themselves into full employment were to be rehabilitated, it had to be in modern statistical dress.

Friedman
in Cambridge

I first met Friedman in the 1950's when I was a second-year undergraduate at Cambridge where he had come on a sabbatical. Unfortunately, I had to share supervisions with another student who had no difficulty in deflecting him into general political conversation. Friedman once arrived early and started to read a copy of Shaw's contribution to Fabian Essays which was lying on the table. “There are three mistakes in the first few pages,” he said, referring to Shaw's excursion into marginal productivity theory in which he thought he could instruct his less well-read fellow Fabians.

For all Friedman's charm, I received from him one of the best put-down remarks I have ever encountered. He mentioned to me a letter he had received from Arthur Burns (later chairman of the Fed) saying that Eisenhower was turning out well as President. I expressed surprise, to which Friedman responded: “First, Burns has much better knowledge of Eisenhower. Secondly, given equal knowledge, I would prefer his opinion to yours.”

  

In the 1950s, Friedman was much better known for his advocacy of floating exchange rates than for monetarism. The background was the widespread concern about a supposed dollar shortage, which Friedman believed entirely due to overvalued exchange rates in Europe and elsewhere. “Sure,” he would say, “there is a dollar shortage in Britain - in exactly the same way as there is a dollar shortage for every US citizen.” He had the last laugh, as within a few years the supposed dollar shortage had turned into an equally mythical dollar surplus.

What I did not discover until many years later was that Friedman had been spitefully frozen out of much of the intellectual life of the Cambridge Economics Faculty. For instance, there was an absurdly-named “secret seminar” that discussed capital theory, where Friedman could have helped very much by cutting through some of the mathematical problems and bringing out the essentials, but from which he was excluded. What dismayed him most were the illiberal attitudes of some in the faculty who were theoretically on his side. An example was the late Professor Sir Denis Robertson, who always maintained reservations about Keynes and who advocated zero inflation decades before that became fashionable. But he shocked Friedman by defending vigorously the right of County Agricultural Committees to dispossess farmers they deemed inefficient. The Chicago professor's admiration for the founding fathers of British economics became tinged with perplexity at what so many contemporary English people were inclined to assert.

“Permanent Income” and Money

During the rest of his career, Friedman was largely occupied with the empirical testing of economic ideas. His major achievement was his Theory of the Consumption Function, published in 1957. which was the work most prominently mentioned in the citation for the Nobel Prize which he won in 1974. His investigation was touched off by a well known paradox. Cross-section data appeared to show that the percentage of income saved increased as income rose. On the other hand, time series data showed much less change in the savings proportion over the years. The resolution of the puzzle was that spending and savings decisions depended on people's views of their long-term (“permanent”) income; but they were much less inclined to adjust to transitory income variations in either direction.

These findings had at least two implications which Friedman cherished. One was that capitalism did not after all suffer from a long-term tendency to stagnate because of under-consumption. Another was that fiscal fine-tuning would be very difficult, as consumers would ignore temporary variations in disposable income due to government budgetary tightening or relaxation. Here indeed is the clue to why Chancellor Kenneth Clarke's 1994 tax increases did not have the recessionary effects so widely predicted. Friedman's Consumption Function was so thorough and convincing in its marriage of theory and data that it convinced many economists who far from relished the political implications.It was in the late 1950 and 1960s that Friedman developed the monetarist doctrines by which he became best known. He treated money as an asset. The public desire to hold this asset depended on incomes, the rate of interest and expected inflation. If more money became available the effect would be initially to raise real output and incomes, but eventually just to raise prices more or less in proportion. Here was where the famous ‘long and variable lags' appeared: typically nine months before real output and income were affected and a further nine months before the main effects on prices came through. These time periods were much cited and much derided; but they were not the heart of Friedman's message.

The stock response of the anti-monetarists was to say that the money supply adjusted passively to events such as wage explosions or government deficits. Although this sometimes occurred it was important for Friedman to establish that this was not always the case. Sometimes money was the active agent, whether because of an inflow of gold, an official easy money policy, an attempt to maintain a particular exchange rate, or whatever.

Monetary History and Monetarism

The book in which he tried most fully to demonstrate money's active role was A Monetary History of the US, 1867-1960, published in 1963 and written jointly with Anna Schwartz it was one of Friedman's skills that he always found the right collaborator for a particular work. The Monetary History is Friedman's masterpiece. Containing hardly any equations, it has been read with profit and pleasure as history, even by people who have disagreed with, or been indifferent to, the doctrines it was designed to advance. Characteristically, it began as a by-product of an attempt to establish the factual record of the US money supply, which turned up so many problems and brought to light so much new material that the more ambitious volume more or less suggested itself.

A later attempt by the same two authors at a more formal equation-based approach, concentrating on cyclical averages and covering the UK as well, was not as successful. There were so many snags that the results did not appear until 1982; and the authors themselves admitted that they were hardly worth the effort. They particularly regretted the time spent on extending the analysis to the UK, which had not yielded much extra light. The scholarly debate on the new work was itself delayed for nearly another decade, partly because of the attempts of British anti-Thatcherites to harness the analysis of Friedman's critics for their own political purposes. One day the story will be told.

The policy conclusion Friedman drew was his famous money supply rule a stable growth of the money supply, year in year out. He accepted that this was not the only policy that could be derived from monetarist findings. But nearly all suggested monetarist strategies became embroiled in difficulties as financial assets proliferated and with them the number of rival definitions of money. In the early 1990s some monetarists were accusing the Fed of depressing the US economy with too tight a policy and at the same time as other monetarists were criticising it for expanding too much.

Friedman himself sometimes gave the impression that whatever a central bank did, it could do no right. To gain his favour it had not only to pursue monetary targets, but pursue them by a particular method known as monetary base control; and when the Fed attempted such a method in 1979-82 it was damned for getting the mechanics wrong.

No
Inflation-Jobs Trade-off

Some economists would argue that Friedman's most important contribution to macroeconomics lay, not in his technical monetary work, but in his 1967 presidential address to the American Economic Association. Here he demonstrated that the idea of a stable trade-off between inflation and unemployment which held sway under the name of the Phillips curve and which seemed to give policymakers a menu of choices was invalid. Suppose that a Government or central bank tried to raise output and employment at the expense of accepting higher inflation. Once market participants started to take into account inflation in their behaviour, the economy would eventually end up with the same rate of unemployment as before but a higher rate of inflation. If the authorities none the less persisted in trying to achieve an over-ambitious target unemployment rate, the result would not be merely inflation, but accelerating inflation, with which no society could live for long.

This family of Friedman doctrines was sometimes called the vertical Phillips curve, sometimes the accelerationist hypothesis and sometimes the ‘natural rate' of unemployment.The latter was the level at which the economy would settle once any stable rate of inflation had been established. The name was later changed by some users to the Nairu the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment to banish the idea that there was anything natural or inevitable about it.


It was in fact these ideas related to the Nairu which caused my own conversion from post-war Keynesianism rather than any of Friedman's more technical monetary ideas. The basic propositions are now quite familiar. But at the time they were explosive stuff for the British economic establishment and also for many American economists on the Eastern seaboard.

Some economists treated the Nairu as a new technocratic concept which they set about estimating and using for still more sophisticated forms of demand management. This was contrary to the spirit of Friedman's address, where it was were obviously intended as a warning against government attempts to spend their way into pre-determined levels of employment. The Friedman ideas achieved popular currency in the UK amazingly enough as a result of prime minister Callaghan's address to the 1976 Labour Party conference when he warned against believing that governments could spend their way into full employment.

All the same it was a little disappointing to those who were interested in macroeconomics rather than monetary technicalities that Friedman did not make more use of the Nairu in his more popular writings. Indeed he sometimes seemed to stretch his own doctrines in attributing to short term variations in monetary growth the responsibility for recessions about which he could be as critical as any Keynesian.

Relations with Thatcher

Friedman's direct influence on Margaret Thatcher was much less than often supposed. Although they got on together at a private dinner before the 1979 election, the two did not know each other well and Friedman is only mentioned en passant in the former prime minister's memoirs. Her own inspiration, as she relates, came from Hayek.

Nevertheless, Friedman had an obvious, if indirect, effect on many of her advisers and ministers. The Medium Term Financial Strategy of the 1980s, with its target of a gradual reduction in the growth of the money supply and the abandonment of fine tuning, obviously stemmed at one remove or another from the Chicago economist.

But the master himself disowned the MTFS because the Bank of England continued to regulate the money supply through interest rates rather than via the monetary base. Moreover, he did not believe that reducing the Budget deficit would have much effect on interest rates or in any other way deserved the prominence given to it in the MTFS. On a broader front, however, without Friedman's writings and television expositions, the Thatcher government would not have enjoyed even that very limited degree of approval that it did among a minority of the intellectual elite.

A Working Retirement

From the late 1970s onwards Friedman lived in San Francisco. He obviously enjoyed his working retirement in this more clement climate, within easy reach of his office at the Hoover Institution in Stanford. Rose was even more obviously delighted with the move.

The very modernity of Friedman meant that he was vulnerable in his technical findings to new researchers claiming to refute his work by still more up to date statistical methods. Indeed, Friedman lived long enough to see a reaction against basing economics on discoverable numerical relationships and the revival of so-called Austrian methods which concentrated on predicting general features of interacting systems on the lines of biology and linguistics. But a methodological dialogue between different schools of free market economists would not have been possible without Friedman's initial dislodgment of the collectivists from the scientific high ground.

In the last couple of decades of his life, Friedman kept his distance from the New Classical Economics which was based on rational expectations and rapid market clearing. He feared that economists were being trapped into a search for mathematical rigour and elegance for their own sake instead of as tools for investigating what was happening.

Outside monetary affairs Friedman remained a mainstream economist. As he himself wrote in Capitalism and Freedom (a book published in 1962 which meant went much deeper than Free to Choose) he could offer no hard and fast line for the limits of government intervention. But he believed that an objective study of the facts, case by case, combined with an underlying belief in personal choice, would usually swing the argument in favour of private provision in the market place. His friend, Sir Alan Walters, has expressed regret, however, that he did not in his last decades devote more effort to scholarly work outside the monetary field.

Friedman himself attributed the spread of both free markets and monetarist ideas to belated recognition of the consequences of soaring government spending and high inflation in the 1970s. But so far as the reaction was coherent and rational, much of the credit must go to him. The very success of free market policies has, of course, led to fresh problems; and what would one not give for a reborn 30-year-old Milton Friedman to comment upon and analyse these new challenges?
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发表于 2006-11-22 21:17:22 | 显示全部楼层
又一个大师去了
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 楼主| 发表于 2006-11-23 05:13:51 | 显示全部楼层
中国争议弗里德曼“遗产”

FT中文网特约撰稿人 陈旭敏
2006年11月21日 星期二


沉痛、哀悼,除了这些,中国还有什么可以表示对一代宗师弗里德曼驾鹤西去的尊敬?

无需其他,或许中国现在所做的就可以让弗老含笑九泉:货币供应量作为货币政策中介目标在中国继续延承!在目前全球中央银行纷纷采用利率、通货膨胀作为货币政策目标的背景下,中国算是遗世独行。

作为弗老的重要“遗产”之一,货币供应量作为中央银行货币政策目标,在中国已逾十年。1993年,前美联储主席格林斯潘在国会听证会上宣布,美联储不再将包括M2在内的货币总量作为货币政策目标,而正是此时,中国则小心翼翼地从美国接过弗老的火炬,首次向全社会公布货币供应量指标,并从1996年正式确定将货币供应量定为货币政策目标。


遗憾的是,货币供应量作为货币政策目标,近年来在中国已经开始受到置疑,有数据证明,作为中介目标的货币供应量,其可控性、可测性及其与最终目标的关联度,或许已经偏离中国预期目标甚远:事实上,从1996年中国正式确定M1做货币政策中介目标,M0和M2做观测目标开始,货币供应量的增长目标值几乎没有实现过。

今年的经济数据,再次将这种置疑推到风口浪尖:截至10月末,广义货币供应量M2增长17.1%,偏离年初定下的目标一个多百分点;与该项指标偏离相对应的是,贷款规模同比多增2.78亿,比年初预定全年目标多出0.28亿元。可以想象的是,如果不是中国央行下半年“急刹车”,M2和贷款的增长肯定会失控,事实上,上半年,中国的M2增长多在19%左右运行。

与此相对应的是,今年前三季度GDP增长10.7%,其中三季度为10.4%,而根据分析师预测全年可达10.6%左右,这远远偏离了今年年初中国总理温家宝宣布的8%增长目标。

导致中国货币供应量可控性失灵的原因复杂,一方面,目前中国基础货币投放完全依赖国际收支顺差,中国央行的公开市场多是防御性操作,对基础货币投放难以完全主动控制,另一方面,由于目前中国经济和金融还处于转轨时期,商业银行和公众对货币需求的变化,使货币乘数很不稳定。

事实上,早在上世纪八十年代,货币供应量作为货币政策的中介目标,在西方国家已遭抛弃。虽然货币供应量在抑制上世纪七十年代的恶性通胀功不可没、而且此后弗老对其货币供应量目标的前提条件有所修正,但是,随着八十年代各主要国家纷纷解除资本流动管制、全球金融市场快速发展以及各种支付工具出现,货币供应量这个中介目标的可控性、可测性以及和最终目标的相关性也随之弱化,并纷纷退出各国中央银行的舞台。

不过,让弗老安慰的是,中国短期内还难以改变货币供应量的中介目标。在目前国际收支顺差居高不下、汇率难以大幅浮动的情况下,短期内,外汇占款仍将成为中国基础货币的最主要渠道,中国央行仍将被动地回笼货币,而很难主动地盯住利率或通货目标。

事实上,早在2003年左右,中国国际顺差还较少的情况下,中央银行一些官员一度放出口风,将公开市场目标从商业银行流动性转向利率,但是此后,随着中国国际收支顺差的高歌猛进,这种语调也已经消声匿迹。

对货币政策中介目标的探索,是一个不断发展的历史,随着中国经济的增长、金融市场的发展,货币中介目标的更替也是顺应自然,但是,无论今后中国选择什么样的货币政策目标,只要有利于经济增长、物价稳定、就业增长、国际收支平衡以及货币传导机制顺畅,都可以成为货币政策中介目标的选择。
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 楼主| 发表于 2006-11-24 04:58:18 | 显示全部楼层
凯恩斯v.弗里德曼:谁赢了?
http://www.ftchinese.com/sc/stor ... =0&loc=HOMEPAGE
  
作者:英国《金融时报》首席经济评论员马丁•沃尔夫(Martin Wolf)
2006年11月23日 星期四
   
1946年逝世的约翰•梅纳德•凯恩斯(John Maynard Keynes),和上周辞世的米尔顿•弗里德曼(Milton Friedman),是20世纪最具影响力的经济学家。由于弗里德曼曾花费大量精力抨击凯恩斯留下来的学说,人们自然会认为他们是相互对立的。的确,他们之间存在深刻的差别,但两者的共同之处亦是如此。更有意思的是,他们都不是赢家,也不是输家:今天的正统经济政策,是两人学说的综合体。

弗里德曼:政府才需要受约束

凯恩斯从“大萧条”(great depression)中得出了这样的结论:自由市场已宣告失败;弗里德曼则认定:失败的是美联储(Federal Reserve)。凯恩斯相信像他自己那样思想深邃的政府官员的判断力;而弗里德曼认为,只有受到严格规范制约的政府才是“安全”的。凯恩斯认为,需要对资本主义加以束缚;而弗里德曼则认为,若放开手脚,资本主义将呈现恰当行为

  

这些差异不言自明。但双方的相似之处同样明显。两人都是才华横溢的记者、辩论家和自身观点的倡导者。两人都认为,从根本上讲,大萧条是一场总需求不足导致的危机;他们都撰文支持浮动汇率,支持名义(或法定)货币;在20世纪的意识形态重大斗争中,两人都站在自由的一边。

悲观的英国中上阶层vs乐观的美国新移民

若非英国和美国是使用同一种语言的两个国家,人们或许会用“自由主义者”(liberals)在18和19世纪的意思来称呼他们两人。但凯恩斯虽然从气质上讲是一位自由主义者,他也是一个江河日下的国家里、中上阶层的悲观一员:他认为,要保留相当程度的自由,就要放弃19世纪正统理念的许多要素。而弗里德曼作为贫穷的犹太移民之子和一个彻头彻尾的美国人,较为乐观:他希望重振自由市场,并对政府进行限制

为实现这一目标,弗里德曼试图推翻在他看来凯恩斯及其继承者所犯下的错误:从当前收入进行消费的固定倾向推动总需求这一假设;认为财政政策是最有力的政策工具这一想法;相信名义需求的变化将导致实际产出的持续变化;对政府运用其判断力抱有信心等

弗里德曼在上世纪50、60年代的著作中,逐一挑战了上述观点。在1957年发表的一篇著名论文中,他辩称,消费并非取决于当前收入,而是取决于永久或长期收入;在与安娜·斯瓦茨(Anna Schwartz)合著的《美国货币史》(A Monetary History of the United States,1963年出版)、与大卫·麦斯曼(David Meiselman)合作的大量实证研究论文中,弗里德曼试图恢复货币数量理论:货币供应和名义需求之间存在稳定的关联;1968年,在他就任美国经济学会(American Economic Association)主席时发表的著名演说中,弗里德曼提出了“自然失业率”(natural rate of unemployment)——又称“不致加速通胀的失业率”(non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment)这一概念,以取代用当时流行的“菲利普斯曲线”(Phillips Curve)来表示的通胀与产出之间的取舍关系。

弗里德曼的理论令人震惊

上世纪60年代,多数经济学家认为,弗里德曼对自由市场的信奉以及对凯恩斯理念的反对是邪恶、误入歧途的,甚至两者兼而有之。我在牛津大学时读到他支持“自然失业率”观点的论点,那时这一概念刚刚提出,我现在还记得当时受到的震动。70年代的大幅通货膨胀——和平时期的空前水平——改变了舆论气候。1971年固定汇率体系崩溃,并转向浮动汇率体系也起到了同样的作用。这一转变发生在价格飙升之前。

在这个汇率或多或少地自由浮动,而通胀急剧上升的世界,需要一种新的理论来提供指引。当时人们寄希望于弗里德曼的货币主义理论——以货币供应为指标。美联储前任主席保罗•沃尔克(Paul Volcker)于1979年至1982年在美国尝试了这种做法。玛格利特•撒切尔(Margaret Thatcher)当政时的英国政府也于1979年至80年代中期,进行了此种尝试。在这两次尝试中,通胀都被摧毁,但货币与名义需求之间的关系也随之崩溃。凯恩斯理论的确已经死亡。但弗里德曼的货币主义主导地位也同样逝去。

受规则约束的机断决策机制

其后,一种新正统学说从废墟中兴起:正如弗里德曼所言,经济政策应瞄准一个名义变量目标,而非实际变量目标;目标应当是通胀这一目的,而非货币这一手段;为了实现目标,各国央行应根据需要自由地调控利率。这就成了一种受规则约束的机断决策机制。弗里德曼赞成遵循规则;而凯恩斯赞成机断决策。弗里德曼胜在将货币政策置于首位;而凯恩斯胜在拒绝接受数量理论。

但从最重要的意义上讲,两人都获得了胜利。过去20年间,名义货币主导的世界做到了通胀水平适度,并为经济稳定增长提供了支撑。这种情况是前所未有的。弗里德曼本人今年初曾表示:“艾伦•格林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)的伟大成就在于,他证明了维持物价稳定的可能性。”这是一位伟大的规则倡议者,对一位伟大的机断决策运用者的赞誉。

以通胀为目标的独立的央行和自由浮动的货币,是不是宏观经济政策的“历史终结”呢?我觉得不是。浮动汇率的反复无常,似乎在呼唤另一次货币一体化实验,甚至尝试一种全球化的货币。

科技进步甚至可能使货币变得多余,使其仅限于发挥记账单位的作用。

政策辩论也将继续。欧洲央行(ECB)或许终将说服它的同行,让它们相信货币数据给人们提供一些有用的信息。同样,各国央行或许也会认识到,它们忽视资产价格的行为存在风险。甚至可能还会再度出现对扩张型财政政策的需求,正如上世纪90年代日本通缩时期的例子所证明的那样。

政府控制着资源

同样不确定的还有市场经济的未来。两人目前在这方面打成平手。凯恩斯可能会担心,放开资本流动可能产生影响经济稳定的后果。而弗里德曼则不得不承认,全面缩减政府角色,并不在议程上。市场的确已经摆脱了20世纪中期的许多桎梏。但政府控制着资源,调控着经济,其程度在一个世纪前是无法想象的。全球化本身也可能失败。

凯恩斯和弗里德曼是上世纪那场政策辩论的主角。但我们今天看到,他们都不是赢家,也不是输家。
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