国际经贸高级英语精读13课课文翻译.docx

1、国际经贸高级英语精读13课课文翻译Starting as low-income economies in the 1960s, a few economies in East Asia managed,in a few decades, to bridge all or nearly all of the income gap that separated them from the high-income economies of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).Meanwhile many

2、other developing economies stagnated .What made the difference?One way to grow is by developing hitherto unexploited land.Another is to accumulate physical capital:roads, factories, telephone networks.A third is to expand the labor force and increase its education and training.But Hong Kong (China)

3、and Singapore had almost no land.They did invest heavily in physical capital and in educating their populations,but so did many other economies.During the 1960s through the 1980s the Soviet Union accumulated more capital as a share of its gross domestic product (GDP) than did Hong Kong (China), the

4、Republic of Korea, Singapore, or Taiwan (China).And it increased the education of its population in no trivial measure. Yet the Soviets generated far smaller increases in living standards during that period than did these four East Asian economies.Perhaps the difference was that the East Asian econo

5、mies did not build, work, and grow harder so much as they built, worked, and grew smarter.Could knowledge, then, have been behind East Asias surge ?If so, the implications are enormous,for that would mean that knowledge is the key to developmentthat knowledge is development.How important was knowled

6、ge for East Asias growth spurt ?This turned out not to be an easy question to answer.The many varieties of knowledge combine with its limited marketability to present a formidable challenge to anyone seeking to evaluate the effect of knowledge on economic growth.How, after all, does one put a price

7、tag on and add up the various types of knowledge?What common denominator lets us sum the knowledge that firms use in their production processes; the knowledge that policymaking institutions use to formulate, monitor, and evaluate policies; the knowledge that people use in their economic transactions

8、 and social interactions?What is the contribution of books and journals, of R&D spending, of the stock of information and communications equipment, of the learning and know-how of scientists, engineers, and students? Compounding the difficulty is the fact that many types of knowledge are accumulated

9、 and exchanged almost exclusively within networks, traditional groups, and professional associations.That makes it virtually impossible to put a value on such knowledge.Reflecting these difficulties in quantifying knowledge,efforts to evaluate the aggregate impact of knowledge on growth have often p

10、roceeded indirectly, by postulating that knowledge explains the part of growth that cannot be explained by the accumulation of tangible and identifiable factors, such as labor or capital.The growth not accounted for by these factors of productionthe residual in the calculationis attributed to growth

11、 in their productivity, that is, using the other factors smarter, through knowledge.This residual is sometimes called the Solow residual, after the economist Robert M. Solow,who spearheaded the approach in the 1950s,and what it purports to measure is conventionally called total factor productivity (

12、TFP) growth.Some also call the Solow residual a measure of our ignorance ,because it represents what we cannot account for. Indeed, we must be careful not to attribute all of TFP growth to knowledge,or there may be other factors lurking in the Solow residual.Many other things do contribute to growth

13、institutions are an examplebut are not reflected in the contributions of the more measurable factors.Their effect is (so far) inextricably woven into TFP growth.In early TFP analyses,physical capital was modeled as the only country-specific factor that could be accumulated to better peoples lives.Te

14、chnical progress and other intangible factors were said to be universal, equally available to all people in all countries,and thus could not explain growth differences between countries.Their contributions to growth were lumped with the TFP growth numbers.Although this assumption was convenient, it

15、quickly became obvious that physical capital was not the only factor whose accumulation drove economic growth. A study that analyzed variations in growth rates across a large number of countries showed that the accumulation of physical capital explained less than 30 percent of those variations.The r

16、est70 percent or morewas attributed directly or indirectly to the intangible factors that make up TFP growth (Table 1.1).Later attempts introduced human capital to better explain the causes of economic growth.A higher level of education in the population means that more people can learn to use bette

17、r technology. Education was surely a key ingredient in the success of four of the fastest-growing East Asian economies: Hong Kong (China), the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan (China). Before their transformation from developing into industrializing economies, their school enrollment rates h

18、ad been much higher than those of other developing countries (Table 1.2).They had also emphasized advanced scientific and technical studiesas measured by their higher ratios of students in technical fields than in even some industrial countriesthus enhancing their capacity to import sophisticated te

19、chnologies.Moreover, the importance of education for economic growth had long been recognized and established empirically .One study had found that growth in years of schooling explained about 25 percent of the increase in GDP per capita in the United States between 1929 and 1982.Adding education re

20、duced the part of growth that could not be explained,thus shrinking the haystack in which TFP growth (and knowledge) remained hidden.Some analysts even concluded, perhaps too quickly,that physical and human capital, properly accounted for, explained all or virtually all of the East Asian economies r

21、apid growth,leaving knowledge as a separate factor out of the picture.One reason these analysts came up with low values for TFP growth is that they incorporated improvements in labor and equipment into their measurement of factor accumulation.So even their evidence of low TFP growth in East Asia doe

22、s not refute the importance of closing knowledge gaps.Indeed, it shows that the fast-growing East Asian economies had a successful strategy to close knowledge gaps:by investing in the knowledge embodied in physical capital, and by investing in people and institutions to enhance the capability to abs

23、orb and use knowledge.Looking beyond East Asia,other growth accounting studies have examined larger samples of countries.Even when human capital is accounted for,the unexplained part of growth remains high.One such study, of 98 countries with an unweighted average growth rate of output per worker of

24、 2.24 percent,found that 34 percent (0.76 percentage point) of that growth came from physical capital accumulation,20 percent (0.45 percentage point) from human capital accumulation,and as much as 46 percent (just over 1 percentage point) from TFP growth.Even more remains to be explained in variatio

25、ns in growth rates across countries. The same study found the combined role of human and physical capital to be as low as 9 percent, leaving the TFP residual at a staggering 91 percent.To take another example:Korea and Ghana had similarly low incomes per capita in the 1950s,but by 1991 Koreas income

26、 per capita was more than seven times Ghanas.Much of that gap remains unexplained even when human capital is taken into account .All these results are subject to measurement problems.For example, the measured stock of human capital may overstate the actual quantity used in producing goods and servic

27、es.High rates of school enrollment or attainment (years completed) may not translate into higher rates of economic growthif the quality of education is poor, or if educated people are not employed at their potential because of distortions in the labor market.Moreover, it is now evident that educatio

28、n without openness to innovation and knowledge will not lead to economic development.The people of the former Soviet Union, like the people of the OECD countries and East Asia, were highly educated, with nearly 100 percent literacy .And for an educated population it is possible,through foreign direc

29、t investment and other means,to acquire and use information about the latest production and management innovations in other countries.But the Soviet Union placed severe restrictions on foreign investment, foreign collaboration, and innovation.Its work force did not adapt and change as new informatio

30、n became available elsewhere in the world, and consequently its economy suffered a decline.(excerpted from World Development Report 1998/1999)一些东亚国家在20世纪60年代还是低收入国家，但是在短短的几十年之间，他们成功地弥补了其与经济合作与发展组织（OECD）中高收入国家之间的差距；与此同时，也有许多发展中国家的经济停滞不前。造成这种差距的原因是什么呢？发展的途径之一便是开发未开垦过的土地；之二是积累实物资本，例如公路，工厂，电话网络；之三则是增加劳动

31、力数量并提高教育培训程度。但香港（中国）和新加坡土地资源稀少，他们确实在实物资本和国民教育上投资不少，但其他许多国家也是这样做的。在20世纪60年代到80年代，前苏联每年资本积累所占GDP的比重要高于香港（中国）、韩国、新加坡和台湾（中国），而且它在提高本国民众的教育水平上也是不遗余力，但这一时期前苏联国民生活水平的提高却远远落后于这四个东亚经济体。也许差别在于：东亚国家在建设、管理和发展其经济方面，与其说他们是苦干了，不如说他们是巧干了。那么难道是知识支撑了东亚的崛起？如果真是这样，那么其蕴含的意义将是深远的，因为这就意味着知识是发展的关键因素知识就是发展。知识对东亚经济的快速增长有何重要意

32、义？事实证明这是一个复杂的问题。各种知识与其有限的可销售性相结合给人们带来了巨大的挑战，这就使得评估知识对于经济增长的作用变得极其困难。毕竟，我们如何才能对种类繁多的知识产品进行标价和合计？有什么共同标准使我们可以计算企业在其生产过程中使用的知识量；我们如何计算决策机构用了多少知识来制定、监管和评估其政策？我们如何计算人们用了多少知识来从事经济活动和社会活动？书刊，研究与开发的支出，信息与通信设备存量，科学家、工程师和学生们的学习与技术能力等要素各自的贡献有多大？更为复杂的是，许多知识实际上是在网络上、传统群体内和学术组织之间积累和交流的。那就使评估这种知识的可能性更加渺茫。考虑到量化知识的困难，人们通常都用了间接的方式来衡量知识在经济增长中的总效果。我们假设：凡是经济增长中那些不能被有形的要素（如劳动力和资本）所解释的部分，都用知识来解释。因为增长中不能由有形生产要素所解释的部分计算中的残差都归功于要素生产率的提高；也就是说，我们通过知识更有效地利用了其它的要素。这种残差有时被称为“索洛残差”，得名于经济学家罗伯特M索洛，他在20世纪50年代率先提出这一方法；这一方法所要度量的就是通常所称的全要素生产力（