Instant economics

即时经济学

A real-time revolution will up-end the practice of macroeconomics

即时革命将颠覆宏观经济学的实践

The pandemic has hastened a shift towards novel data and fast analysis

新冠疫情加快了经济学向新型数据和快速分析的转变


Does anyone really understand what is going on in the world economy? The pandemic has made plenty of observers look clueless. Few predicted $80 oil, let alone fleets of container ships waiting outside Californian and Chinese ports. As covid-19 let rip in 2020, forecasters overestimated how high unemployment would be by the end of the year. Today prices are rising faster than expected and nobody is sure if inflation and wages will spiral upward. For all their equations and theories, economists are often fumbling in the dark, with too little information to pick the policies that would maximise jobs and growth.

谁能真正看懂世界经济怎么了？新冠疫情使许多观察家陷入迷思。很少有人预测到油价达到80美元，更不用说预测到在加州和中国港口外等待清关的集装箱船队了。随着2020年爆发新冠疫情，预测专家高估了年底失业率。现在的物价增速超出预期，没有人确定通货膨胀和薪水会不会急剧增长。尽管经济学家有各种公式和理论，但他们往往在黑暗中摸索，掌握的信息太少，不知采取什么政策最大限度增加就业和经济增长。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


Yet, as we report this week, the age of bewilderment is starting to give way to greater enlightenment. The world is on the brink of a real-time revolution in economics, as the quality and timeliness of information are transformed. Big firms from Amazon to Netflix already use instant data to monitor grocery deliveries and how many people are glued to “Squid Game”. The pandemic has led governments and central banks to experiment, from monitoring restaurant bookings to tracking card payments. The results are still rudimentary, but as digital devices, sensors and fast payments become ubiquitous, the ability to observe the economy accurately and speedily will improve. That holds open the promise of better public-sector decision-making—as well as the temptation for governments to meddle.

但正如我们本周所报道的，迷思时代开始让位于大启蒙时代。世界即将发生经济学上的即时革命，信息的质量和时效性都在发生变化。亚马逊、网飞等大企业已经利用实时数据监测货物配送，以及电视剧《鱿鱼游戏》的收视率。新冠疫情促使各国政府开展试验，诸如监测酒店预订和信用卡支付。成果尚不完善，但随着数字设备、传感器、快捷支付的普及，准确快速地监测经济将取得进步。有希望改善公共部门的决策，促使政府干预经济。

The desire for better economic data is hardly new. America’s gnp estimates date to 1934 and initially came with a 13-month time lag. In the 1950s a young Alan Greenspan monitored freight-car traffic to arrive at early estimates of steel production. Ever since Walmart pioneered supply-chain management in the 1980s private-sector bosses have seen timely data as a source of competitive advantage. But the public sector has been slow to reform how it works. The official figures that economists track—think of gdp or employment—come with lags of weeks or months and are often revised dramatically. Productivity takes years to calculate accurately. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that central banks are flying blind.

渴望获得更准确的经济数据不是新鲜事。美国对国民生产总值的估算可追溯到1934年，最初有13个月的滞后性。上世纪50年代，年轻的艾伦·格林斯潘通过监测货车交通量来初步估算钢铁产量。上世纪80年代，私企老板将实时数据视为一种竞争优势，但公共部门针对实时数据的工作机制改革进展缓慢。经济学家跟踪的官方数据——诸如国内生产总值或就业率——有数周乃至数月的滞后性，并且经常需要大幅修正。生产效率需要多年才能准确计算出来，稍微夸张一点地说，各国央行毫无头绪。

Bad and late data can lead to policy errors that cost millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in lost output. The financial crisis would have been a lot less harmful had the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to near zero in December 2007, when America entered recession, rather than in December 2008, when economists at last saw it in the numbers. Patchy data about a vast informal economy and rotten banks have made it harder for India’s policymakers to end their country’s lost decade of low growth. The European Central Bank wrongly raised interest rates in 2011 amid a temporary burst of inflation, sending the euro area back into recession. The Bank of England may be about to make a similar mistake today.

错误和滞后数据会导致决策失误，损失数百万个就业和数万亿美元产量。如果美联储在2007年12月（美国已进入经济衰退）将利率降至接近于零，那么金融危机的损失会小得多。但直到2008年12月，经济学家才在数据中发现衰退。印度拥有庞大的非正规经济和腐朽的银行，零碎的数据使印度决策者更难结束迷失的十年低速增长。2011年，欧洲央行在通胀率临时暴涨的情况下错误地提高利率，使欧元区再次陷入衰退，现在英格兰银行可能也要犯类似的错误。

The pandemic has, however, become a catalyst for change. Without the time to wait for official surveys to reveal the effects of the virus or lockdowns, governments and central banks have experimented, tracking mobile phones, contactless payments and the real-time use of aircraft engines. Instead of locking themselves in their studies for years writing the next “General Theory”, today’s star economists, such as Raj Chetty at Harvard University, run well-staffed labs that crunch numbers. Firms such as JPMorgan Chase have opened up treasure chests of data on bank balances and credit-card bills, helping reveal whether people are spending cash or hoarding it.

但是，新冠疫情成为变革的催化剂。各国政府和央行来不及等待官方调查新冠病毒或封城造成的影响，而是试验追踪手机、非接触式支付、飞机发动机的实时使用情况。当今知名的经济学家不再经过多年的闭门研究以编写下一部《通论》，而是通过人才济济的实验室来计算数据，例如：哈佛大学的哈吉·柴提。摩根大通等企业公开了有关银行存款和信用卡账单的宝贵数据，有助于了解人们在花钱还是存钱。

These trends will intensify as technology permeates the economy. A larger share of spending is shifting online and transactions are being processed faster. Real-time payments grew by 41% in 2020, according to McKinsey, a consultancy (India registered 25.6bn such transactions). More machines and obxts are being fitted with sensors, including individual shipping containers that could make sense of supply-chain blockages. Govcoins, or central-bank digital currencies (cbdcs), which China is already piloting and over 50 other countries are considering, might soon provide a goldmine of real-time detail about how the economy works.

这些趋势将随着科技渗透经济而加剧。大部分支付正在向网上转移，交易的处理速度正在加快。根据麦肯锡咨询公司的数据，2020年，实时支付增长41%（印度记录了256亿笔这类交易）。越来越多的机器和物品装有传感器，包括单个集装箱，有助于掌握供应链的阻塞情况。中国已经率先发行政府数字币，也称央行数字币，50多个国家也在考虑这样做，可能很快为了解经济运行情况提供宝贵的实时详情。

Timely data would cut the risk of policy cock-ups—it would be easier to judge, say, if a dip in activity was becoming a slump. And the levers governments can pull will improve, too. Central bankers reckon it takes 18 months or more for a change in interest rates to take full effect. But Hong Kong is trying out cash handouts in digital wallets that expire if they are not spent quickly. cbdcs might allow interest rates to fall deeply negative. Good data during crises could let support be precisely targeted; imagine loans only for firms with robust balance-sheets but a temporary liquidity problem. Instead of wasteful universal welfare payments made through social-security bureaucracies, the poor could enjoy instant income top-ups if they lost their job, paid into digital wallets without any paperwork.

实时数据能够减少决策失误的风险——例如，更容易判断经济活动下滑是否正在变成经济衰退。另外，政府使用的各种杠杆也将得到改善。据各国央行估算，利率调整需要18个月以上才能完全发挥效用。但是，香港正在试验通过电子钱包发放救济金，如果没有很快花掉，这笔钱就会作废。央行数字币可能允许利率大幅下降至负值。在危机期间，准确的数据可以使救济金有的放矢；想象一下，针对那些资产负债表稳健，但暂时存在流动性问题的企业提供专项贷款。不再通过社保官僚机构向全民发放福利金而造成浪费，让失业的穷人通过电子钱包立即获得救济金，无需提供任何书面材料。

The real-time revolution promises to make economic decisions more accurate, transparent and rules-based. But it also brings dangers. New indicators may be misinterpreted: is a global recession starting or is Uber just losing market share? They are not as representative or free from bias as the painstaking surveys by statistical agencies. Big firms could hoard data, giving them an undue advantage. Private firms such as Facebook, which launched a digital wallet this week, may one day have more insight into consumer spending than the Fed does.

即时革命有希望使经济决策更加准确、透明、符合规则。但也会带来风险，新指标可能被误读：究竟是全球经济开始衰退，还是“优步”仅仅在失去市场份额？相比统计机构辛苦做出的调查，新指标的代表性不是那么强，无法避免误差。大企业可能囤积数据，从而具备不当的优势。本周“脸书”推出了一种电子钱包，像这样的私企总有一天会比美联储更了解消费支出的情况。

Know thyself

自知之明
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


The biggest danger is hubris. With a panopticon of the economy, it will be tempting for politicians and officials to imagine they can see far into the future, or to mould society according to their preferences and favour particular groups. This is the dream of the Chinese Communist Party, which seeks to engage in a form of digital central planning.

最大的危险是自高自大。由于能获得经济全景，政客和官员容易误以为看得到遥远的未来，或者根据自己的喜好塑造社会和偏向特定群体。这是中国的梦想，谋求一种数字化的中央规划。

In fact no amount of data can reliably predict the future. Unfathomably complex, dynamic economies rely not on Big Brother but on the spontaneous behaviour of millions of independent firms and consumers. Instant economics isn’t about clairvoyance or omniscience. Instead its promise is prosaic but transformative: better, timelier and more rational decision-making.

事实上，无论多少数据也无法可靠地预测未来。经济的复杂性与活力是难以琢磨的，它有赖于自主的企业和消费者的自发行为，而不是“老大哥”。即时经济学不是未卜先知，也不是无所不知，它具有平凡而变革性的潜力：更准确、更及时、更理性的决策。