Recently Yahoo News on-line picked up the following:
Nobel economics prize goes to 3 economists who found that
freer societies are more likely to prosper (2/2)
Daniel Niemann, Mike Corder And Paul Wiseman
Tue, October 15, 2024 at 4:45 a.m. GMT+8·6 min read
The Associated Press
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In their work, the winners looked, for instance, at the city
of Nogales, which straddles the U.S.-Mexico border.
Despite sharing the same geography, climate and a common
culture, life is very different on either side of the border. In Nogales,
Arizona, to the north, residents are relatively well-off and live long lives;
most children graduate from high school. To the south, in Mexico’s Nogales,
Sonora, residents are much poorer, and organized crime and corruption abound.
The difference, the economists found, is a U.S. system that protects property rights and gives citizens a say in their government.
Acemoglu expressed worry Monday that democratic institutions in the United States and Europe were losing support from the population.
“Support for democracy is at an all-time low, especially in the U.S., but also in Greece and in the UK and France,“ Acemoglu said on the sidelines of the conference in an Athens suburb.
“And I think that is a symbol of how people are disappointed with democracy,” he said. “They think democracy hasn’t delivered what it promised.''
Robinson agreed. "Clearly, you had an attack on inclusive institutions in this country," he said. “You had a presidential candidate who denied that he lost the last election. So President (Donald) Trump rejected the democratic rule of the citizens. ... Of course, I’m worried. I’m a concerned citizen.”
Johnson told the AP that economic pressures were alienating many Americans.
“A lot of people who were previously in the middle class were hit very hard by the combination of globalization, automation, the decline of trade unions, and a sort of shift more broadly in corporate philosophy,'' Johnson said. "So instead of workers being a resource to be developed, which they were in the 19th and early 20th century, they became a cost to be minimized ... Now, that squeezed the middle class.’’
"We have, as a country, failed to deliver in recent decades on what we were previously very good at, which was sharing prosperity,'' Johnson said.
One key for the future, Johnson said, is how societies manage new technologies such as artificial intelligence.
“AI could go either way," he said. "AI could either empower people with a lot of education, make them more highly skilled, enable them to do more tasks and get more pay. Or it could be another massive wave of automation that pushes the remnants of the middle down to the bottom. And then, yes, you’re not going to like the political outcomes.’’
In their work, the economists studied institutions that European powers such as Britain and Spain put in place when they colonized much of the world starting in the 1600s. They brought different policies to different places, giving later researchers a “natural experiment" to analyze.
Colonies that were sparsely populated offered less resistance to foreign rule and therefore attracted more settlers. In those places, colonial governments tended to establish more inclusive economic institutions that “incentivized settlers to work hard and invest in their new homeland. In turn, this led to demands for political rights that gave them a share of profits,” the Nobel committee said.
In more densely populated places that attracted fewer settlers, the colonial regimes limited political rights and set up institutions that focused on “benefiting a local elite at the expense of the wider population," it said.
The economics prize is formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The central bank established it in 1968 as a memorial to Nobel, the 19th-century Swedish businessman and chemist who invented dynamite and established the five Nobel Prizes.
Though Nobel purists stress that the economics prize is technically not a Nobel Prize, it is always presented together with the others on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.
Nobel honors were announced last week in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace.
Translation
諾貝爾經濟學獎頒給三位經濟學家，他們發現更自由的社會更有可能繁榮
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例如，獲獎者在他們的作品中著眼於橫跨美國和墨西哥邊境的Nogales市。
儘管地理、氣候和文化相同，但邊境兩邊的生活卻截然不同。在北部的亞利桑那州的Nogales，居民相對富裕，壽命較長。大多數孩子高中畢業。在南部的墨西哥索諾拉州的Nogales，居民貧窮得多，有組織的犯罪和腐敗比比皆是。
經濟學家發現，差異在於美國的制度是會保護財產權並賦予公民在政府中的發言權。
Acemoglu週一對美國和歐洲的民主機構正在失去民眾的支持表示擔憂。
Acemoglu在參加雅典郊區舉行的附屬會議中表示: 「對民主的支持處於歷史最低水平，尤其是在美國，但在希臘、英國和法國也是如此」。
他說:「我認為這象徵著人們對民主感到失望」; 「他們認為民主沒有兌現其承諾」。
Robinson表示同意。他說: 「顯然，你們曾發生過對這個國家的包容性機構發起了攻擊」。 「有一位總統候選人否認自己輸掉了上次選舉。因此，特朗普總統是排斥了公民的民主統治。 ……當然，我很擔心。我是一個關心此事的公民」。
Johnson告訴美聯社，經濟壓力正在疏遠許多美國人。
Johnson說：「全球化、自動化、工會衰落以及企業理念的更廣泛轉變等因素綜合在一起，讓許多以前屬於中產階級的人受到了沉重打擊」; 「因此，工人不再像 19 世紀和 20 世紀初那樣成為一種需要開發的資源，而是成為一種最需要降低價格的成本……現在，這擠壓了中產階級」。
Johnson說： “作為一個國家，近幾十年來我們未能實現我們以前非常擅長的事情，那就是共享繁榮。”
Johnson說，未來的關鍵之一是社會如何管理人工智慧等新技術。
他說:「人工智慧可以走任何一條路」;「人工智慧可以使人們接受大量教育，提高他們的技能，使他們能夠完成更多任務並獲得更多報酬。或者，這可能是另一波大規模的自動化浪潮，將殘餘的中產階級推向基層。之後，是的，是你會不喜歡的政治結果」。
在他們的工作中，這些經濟學家研究了英國和西班牙等歐洲列強從 1600 年代開始殖民世界大部分地區時所建立的當地制度。他們為不同的地方帶來了不同的政策，為後來的研究人員提供了一個「自然實驗」來分析。
人口稀少的殖民地對外國統治的抵抗力較小，因此吸引了更多的定居者。諾貝爾委員會表示, 在這些地方，殖民政府傾向於建立更具包容性的經濟機構，以「激勵定居者努力工作並投資在他們的新家園。正因為如此，導致了對政治權利的要求，從而使他們分享成果」。
報告稱，在人口稠密、吸引較少定居者的地方，殖民政權限制政治權利，並建立了專注於「以犧牲更廣泛人口為代價，讓當地精英受益」的架構。
報告補充說：「矛盾的是，這意味著 500 年前相對最繁榮的殖民地地區現在卻是相對貧窮的地區」;它指出在18 世紀, 印度的工業生產超過了美洲殖民地的。
該經濟學獎的正式名稱為紀念阿爾弗雷德·諾貝爾的瑞典銀行經濟科學獎。中央銀行於 1968 年建立了它，以紀念諾貝爾，這位 19 世紀的瑞典商人和化學家發明了炸藥並設立了五項諾貝爾獎。
儘管諾貝爾純粹主義者強調，從技術上講，經濟學獎並不是諾貝爾獎，但它總是在
12 月 10 日，即 1896
年諾貝爾逝世週年紀念日與其他獎項一起頒發。
上週公佈了諾貝爾醫學獎、物理學獎、化學獎、文學獎和和平獎。
So, the Nobel memorial prize in
economics is awarded to three economists who have studied why some countries
are rich and others poor and suggest that freer, open societies are more
likely to prosper in the long run. Their research underscores the value
of democratic institutions that tends to have an inclusive society. I share
their observation that the parts of the colonized world that were relatively
the most prosperous around 500 years ago are now those that are relatively poor, after noting that India’s industrial production exceeded the American colonies (including
the future US) in the 18th century.
