CAMBRIDGE – As
one year of sluggish growth spills into the next, there is growing debate about
what to expect over the coming decades. Was the global financial crisis a harsh
but transitory setback to advanced-country growth, or did it expose a deeper
long-term malaise?
Recently, a few writers, including internet entrepreneur Peter
Thiel and political activist and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, have
espoused a fairly radical interpretation of the slowdown. In a forthcoming book, they argue that the collapse of
advanced-country growth is not merely a result of the financial crisis; at its
root, they argue, these countries’ weakness reflects secular stagnation in
technology and innovation. As such, they are unlikely to see any sustained
pickup in productivity growth without radical changes in innovation policy.
Economist Robert Gordon takes this
idea even further. He argues that the period of rapid technological progress
that followed the Industrial Revolution may prove to be a 250-year exception to
the rule of stagnation in human history. Indeed, he suggests that today’s
technological innovations pale in significance compared to earlier advances
like electricity, running water, the internal combustion engine, and other
breakthroughs that are now more than a century old.
I recently
debated the technological stagnation thesis with Thiel and Kasparov at Oxford
University, joined by encryption
pioneer Mark
Shuttleworth. Kasparov pointedly asked what products such as the iPhone 5
really add to our capabilities, and argued that most of the science underlying
modern computing was settled by the seventies. Thiel maintained that efforts to
combat the recession through loose monetary policy and hyper-aggressive fiscal
stimulus treat the wrong disease, and therefore are potentially very harmful.
These are very interesting ideas, but
the evidence still seems overwhelming that the drag on the global economy
mainly reflects the aftermath of a deep systemic financial crisis, not a
long-term secular innovation crisis.
There are certainly those who believe
that the wellsprings of science are running dry, and that, when one looks
closely, the latest gadgets and ideas driving global commerce are essentially
derivative. But the vast majority of my scientist colleagues at top
universities seem awfully excited about their projects in nanotechnology,
neuroscience, and energy, among other cutting-edge fields. They think they are
changing the world at a pace as rapid as we have ever seen. Frankly, when I
think of stagnating innovation as an economist, I worry about how overweening
monopolies stifle ideas, and how recent changes extending the validity of patents
have exacerbated this problem.
No, the main cause of the recent
recession is surely a global credit boom and its subsequent meltdown. The
profound resemblance of the current malaise to the aftermath of past deep
systemic financial crises around the world is not merely qualitative. The
footprints of crisis are evident in indicators ranging from unemployment to
housing prices to debt accumulation. It is no accident that the current era
looks so much like what followed dozens of deep financial crises in the past.
Granted, the credit boom itself may be
rooted in excessive optimism surrounding the economic-growth potential implied
by globalization and new technologies. As Carmen Reinhart and I emphasize in
our book This Time is Different, such fugues of optimism often
accompany credit run-ups, and this is hardly the first time that globalization
and technological innovation have played a central role.
Attributing the ongoing slowdown to
the financial crisis does not imply the absence of long-term secular effects,
some of which are rooted in the crisis itself. Credit contractions almost
invariably hit small businesses and start-ups the hardest. Since many of the
best ideas and innovations come from small companies rather than large,
established firms, the ongoing credit contraction will inevitably have
long-term growth costs. At the same time, unemployed and underemployed workers’
skill sets are deteriorating. Many recent college graduates are losing as well,
because they are less easily able to find jobs that best enhance their skills
and thereby add to their long-term productivity and earnings.
With cash-strapped governments
deferring urgently needed public infrastructure projects, medium-term growth
also will suffer. And, regardless of technological trends, other secular
trends, such as aging populations in most advanced countries, are taking a toll
on growth prospects as well. Even absent the crisis, countries would have had
to make politically painful adjustments to pension and health-care programs.
Taken together, these factors make it
easy to imagine trend GDP growth being one percentage point below normal for
another decade, possibly even longer. If the Kasparov-Thiel-Gordon hypothesis
is right, the outlook is even darker – and the need for reform is far more
urgent. After all, most plans for emerging from the financial crisis assume
that technological progress will provide a strong foundation of productivity
growth that will eventually underpin sustained recovery. The options are far
more painful if the pie has ceased growing quickly.
So, is the main cause of the recent
slowdown an innovation crisis or a financial crisis? Perhaps some of both, but
surely the economic trauma of the last few years reflects, first and foremost,
a financial meltdown, even if the way forward must simultaneously treat other
obstacles to long-term growth.
創新危機還是金融危機？
發自劍橋——隨著一年的增長遲緩繼續蔓延到下一年，人們對未來幾十年的未來走向也出現了越來越多的爭議。全球金融危機對發達國家的增長來說究竟只是一個殘酷但短暫的挫折，還是暴露了更深層次的長期經濟低迷？
最近，包括互聯網創業者彼得·泰爾（Peter Thiel）和政治活動家及前國際象棋世界冠軍加利·卡斯帕羅夫（Garry
Kasparov）在內的一些作家都支持對經濟放緩作相當激進的解讀。在一本即將出版的書中，他們提出發達國家經濟增長的崩潰不僅僅是金融危機的後果﹔而是從根本上反映了其科技和創新方面的長期停滯。同樣地，如果不徹底改革創新政策，這些國家就不大可能出現生產力增長的可持續回升。
經濟學家羅伯特·戈登（Robert Gordon）對這個觀點思考得更為深入。他提出工業革命之後的250年技術高速進步時期有可能會被証明是人類歷史上停滯規則的一個例外。事實上他認為相比從前的科技進步——例如電力、自來水、內燃機的發明和其他距今一百多年的突破性發明，現在的技術創新都黯然失色。
我近期在牛津大學與泰爾、卡斯帕羅夫討論科技停滯這個觀點，加密技術方面的先鋒人物馬克·沙特爾沃斯（Mark Shuttleworth）也加入了我們的討論。卡斯帕羅夫尖銳地提出這樣一個問題——像Iphone 5這種產品到底提高了我們的什麼能力，並指出大多數現代計算機背後的科學原理在上個世紀七十年代就已經解決了。泰爾認為通過寬鬆的貨幣政策和高度擴張性的財政刺激來對抗經濟衰退的努力並沒有對症下藥，因此可能是非常有害的。
這些都是很有意思的想法，然而現在的跡象依舊在很大程度上表明拖累全球經濟的主要是深層系統性金融危機，而不是一個長期的世俗創新危機。
當然也有一些人認為科學的泉源正在枯竭，而且當人們認真觀察時會發現，驅動全球商業發展的最新產品和創意本質上都是衍生品。但我那些在頂尖大學的絕大部分科學家同事們似乎對他們在納米技術、神經學、能源等尖端領域上的項目感到很興奮。他們認為他們在以我們從來沒有見過的速度改變著這個世界。坦白說，作為一個經濟學家，當我想到停滯的創新時，我很擔心過分的壟斷會扼殺創意，並且擔憂近期延長專利有效期的變化是如何令這一問題進一步惡化的。
但引發最近經濟衰退的主要原因顯然是全球信貸繁榮及隨之而來的災難。當前的經濟頹勢與過去深層系統性全球金融危機所造成的後果的深刻相似之處可不僅僅是性質上的。危機的跡象顯著分布於從失業率到房價以及累積債務等指標之上。不出意外，當前的時代看起來也跟過去幾十個嚴重金融危機爆發後的時期非常相似。
誠然，信貸繁榮本身可能源於圍繞著經濟增長潛力所產生的過度樂觀——這是受全球化和新科技影響的結果。正如我和卡門·瑞哈特（Carmen Reinhart）在《這次不一樣》一書中所強調的那樣——這種樂觀通常伴隨著信貸的急劇增長，這也不是全球化和科技創新第一次扮演核心作用了。
把目前正在持續的經濟放緩歸咎於金融危機並不意味著就沒有長期的持續性影響——其中一些影響就深植於危機本身。信用緊縮幾乎總是無情地打擊小型企業和新興企業。由於許多最好的新思想和創新都來自小公司而不是老牌大型企業，當前持續的信用緊縮必將導致長期增長成本的產生。同時，失業以及未充分就業的工人技能正在退化。現在很多大學畢業生也飽受挫折，因為他們不太容易找到最能提高自身技能的工作，因此也削弱了他們的長期生產能力和收入。
由於現金拮據的政府推遲急需的公共基礎設施工程，中期增長也會受到損害。而且，不管技術趨勢如何發展，其他長期性因素——比如大多數發達國家的人口老齡化，也正影響著經濟增長的前景。即使沒有危機的出現，各國也得對養老金和醫療保險項目做出艱難的政治調整。
綜合起來考慮，很容易設想得到GDP增長走向在未來十年——可能不止十年——比正常水平低1%。如果卡斯帕羅夫-泰爾-戈登猜想正確的話，經濟前景會更加黯淡——而對改革的需求也就更迫切。畢竟，大部分要擺脫金融危機的計劃都假設科技進步將會為生產率增長提供一個的堅實基礎，而這最終將會鞏固持續的經濟復蘇。如果經濟大餅停止快速增長，那麼我們就得面對更加痛苦的抉擇。
那麼，引起近期經濟放緩的主要原因究竟是創新危機還是金融危機？也許兩者兼而有之，但可以肯定的是過去幾年經濟創傷反映的首先是一個金融危機，儘管未來前進的方向也必須同時清理其他障礙以保証長期增長。