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曼昆经济学原理（双语）
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第二章 像经济学家一样思考
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2-3 Why Economists Disagree 为什么经济学家意见分歧
“If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.” This quip from George Bernard Shaw is revealing. Economists as a group are often criticized for giving conflicting advice to policymakers. President Ronald Reagan once joked that if the game Trivial Pursuit were designed for economists, it would have 100 questions and 3,000 answers. Why do economists so often appear to give conflicting advice to policymakers? There are two basic reasons:
“如果把所有经济学家聚在一起，他们也得不出一个结论。”肖伯纳（George Bernard Shaw）的嘲讽溢于言表。人们经常批评经济学家作为一个群体向决策者提出了相互矛盾的建议。罗纳德?里根（Ronald Reagan）总统曾经开玩笑地说，如果小追击（Trivial Pursuit）游戏是由经济学家设计的，那么，100个问题会有3000个答案。为
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什么经济学家往往给决策者提出了看来相互矛盾的建议呢？这里有两个基本原因：
①Economists may disagree about the validity of alternative positive theories of how the world works.
经济学家可能不同意关于世界如何运转的其他实证理论的有效性。
②Economists may have different values and therefore different normative views about what government policy should aim to accomplish.
经济学家可能有不同的价值观，因此对于政府政策应该实现什么目标有不同的规范性观点。
Let’s discuss each of these reasons. 让我们逐一讨论这些原因。
2-3a Differences in Scientific Judgments
科学判断的不同
Several centuries ago, astronomers debated whether the earth or the sun was at the center of the solar system. More recently, climatologists have debated whether the earth is experiencing global warming and, if so, why. Science is an ongoing search to understand the world around us. It is not surprising that as the search continues, scientists sometimes disagree about the direction in which truth lies.
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几个世纪之前，天文学家为太阳系的中心是地球还是太阳而争论不休。最近，气象学家也在争论地球是否正在经历着“全球变暖”。科学是在探讨对我们周围世界的认识。随着研究的深入，科学家对真理的认知有分歧毫不奇怪。
Economists often disagree for the same reason. Economics is a young science, and there is still much to be learned. Economists sometimes disagree because they have different hunches about the validity of alternative theories or about the size of important parameters that measure how economic variables are related.
经济学家通常也会由于同样的原因而有分歧。经济学是一门年轻的科学，仍然有许多问题需要探讨。经济学家有时意见不一致，是因为他们对不同理论的正确性或重要参数的大小有不同的预感。
For example, economists disagree about whether the government should tax a household’s income or its consumption (spending). Advocates of a switch from the current income tax to a consumption tax believe that the change would encourage households to save more because income that is saved would not be taxed. Higher saving, in turn, would free resources for capital accumulation, leading to more rapid growth in productivity and living standards. Advocates of the current income tax system believe that household saving would not respond much to a change in the tax laws. These two groups of economists hold different normative views about the tax system because they have
曼昆经济学原理(双语)2.11
