Why Economies Become Less Dynamic as They Age

沃爾特·弗里克（Walter Frick）| 文

In April 2020, the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen published a widely read essay titled?“It's Time to Build.”?For all its supposed dynamism, the U.S. economy appeared slow and inflexible in the face of a once-in-a-generation crisis. Masks and ventilators were in short supply, but this inability to rapidly adjust wasn't specific to Covid-19: America had long struggled to build housing, high-speed rail, and zero-emission sources of power, too. Andreessen's critique crystallized something numerous scholars and commentators had been saying, and it had fans across the political spectrum.

2020年4月，風(fēng)險(xiǎn)資本家馬克·安德里森(Marc Andreessen)發(fā)表了一篇廣為閱讀的文章，題為“是該建設(shè)的時(shí)候了”。盡管美國(guó)經(jīng)濟(jì)在人們心目中充滿活力，但它在面對(duì)一代人一遇的危機(jī)時(shí)顯得遲緩、僵化?？谡趾秃粑鞴┎粦?yīng)求，但這種迅速調(diào)整能力的缺乏并非新冠疫情所特有：美國(guó)長(zhǎng)期以來(lái)在建設(shè)住房、高速鐵路和零排放能源方面也力不從心。安德里森的批評(píng)讓許多學(xué)者和評(píng)論家一直在說(shuō)的東西變得明確具體，而且在政界各派中擁有粉絲。

There was?much less agreement?on how we'd gotten here, however. Was it cultural malaise? Broken political institutions? Too much regulation? People seemed to agree that the U.S. had lost some essential dynamism, but couldn't agree why.?

然而，對(duì)于我們是如何走到這一步的，達(dá)成的共識(shí)要少得多。這是因?yàn)槲幕酿蠹玻繗埰频恼沃贫龋窟€是過(guò)多的監(jiān)管？人們似乎認(rèn)同，美國(guó)已經(jīng)失去了部分基本的活力，但卻無(wú)法就其原因達(dá)成一致意見。

This week, Yale University Press is republishing an old book that claims to have the answer. Mancur Olson's 1982?The Rise and Decline of Nations?is a canonical account of how economies become less flexible and dynamic as they age. In?Rise and Decline, Olson argues that?the older an economy gets, the more collusion and lobbying it will have, and over time this accumulation of interest groups will corrode an economy by capturing the political process and slowing everything down. The reissue is testament to a rediscovery of Olson's work by?experts in economics and political science, who are contending with many of the same issues Olson grappled with.

最近，耶魯大學(xué)出版社將要重新出版一本聲稱擁有答案的舊著。曼庫(kù)爾·奧爾森(Mancur Olson)1982年的《國(guó)家的興衰》(The Rise and Decline of Nations)是一本對(duì)各經(jīng)濟(jì)體如何在老化的過(guò)程中失去靈活性和活力的經(jīng)典論述。在《興衰》中，奧爾森指出，一個(gè)經(jīng)濟(jì)體越高齡，勾結(jié)和游說(shuō)就越多。隨著時(shí)間的推移，利益集團(tuán)的這種積累會(huì)以控制政治進(jìn)程和放緩一切步伐的方式來(lái)腐蝕經(jīng)濟(jì)體。此次再版證明經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)和政治學(xué)專家對(duì)奧爾森的著作有了重新發(fā)現(xiàn)，他們正在對(duì)付的許多問題正是奧爾森努力解決的問題。

In his introduction to the new edition,?Harvard economist Edward Glaeser recalls his own long journey back to?Rise and Decline. Glaeser first read the book as a graduate student in 1993 and lightly dismissed it. While he found Olson's logic sound, the writer's preoccupation with the “stagflation” of the 1970s simply didn't feel relevant to the boom times of post-Reagan America.

哈佛大學(xué)經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家愛德華·格萊澤(Edward Glaeser)在其撰寫的新版導(dǎo)言中回顧了他自己讀《興衰》的漫長(zhǎng)歷程。格萊澤1993年首次讀到這本書的時(shí)候是一名研究生，而且淡然地對(duì)其不屑一顧。雖然他發(fā)現(xiàn)奧爾森的邏輯合乎情理，但是作者一心對(duì)20世紀(jì)70年代“滯脹”的關(guān)注與后里根時(shí)代的美國(guó)繁榮時(shí)期根本沒有關(guān)系。

But as he studied the economics of cities, Olson's ideas started to come back to him. Glaeser's research showed that the most vibrant, productive parts of the U.S. — cities like New York, Boston, and San Francisco — were refusing to build new housing. That drove up the cost of living and prevented new people from moving there. Opposition to new construction was?strangling the entire country's growth,?and the book Glaeser had dismissed in graduate school purported to explain why:?Maybe America was struggling to build because a vast array of interest groups were inserting themselves in the process, slowing down decision making and using public policy to defend their interests at the expense of the common good.

然而，當(dāng)他研究城市經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)時(shí)，奧爾森的觀點(diǎn)開始重返他的腦海。格萊澤的研究表明，美國(guó)最具活力、最具生產(chǎn)力的地區(qū)——紐約、波士頓和舊金山等城市——開始拒絕建造新住宅。這推高了生活成本，妨礙了人們新遷到這些地方。反對(duì)新建工程開始扼殺整個(gè)國(guó)家的發(fā)展，而格萊澤在研究生院時(shí)小瞧的那本書聲稱可以解釋原因：也許美國(guó)難以搞建設(shè)的原因是因?yàn)榇罅康睦婕瘓F(tuán)介入了這一過(guò)程，減緩了決策的速度，并利用公共政策來(lái)保護(hù)他們的利益，犧牲的是共同利益。

Olson was obsessed with the logic of interest groups. The main barrier to a group of people joining together to advance a common interest, he thought, was the free rider problem: Each member would prefer the group to exist but prefers not to personally invest time and money getting it started. Without some enforcement mechanism — like mandatory dues in a union — no one steps up because it'll cost them a lot and they'll gain just a little.

奧爾森對(duì)利益集團(tuán)的邏輯非常著迷。他認(rèn)為，一群人聯(lián)合起來(lái)推進(jìn)共同利益的主要障礙是搭便車問題：每個(gè)成員都希望這個(gè)團(tuán)體存在，但卻不愿意個(gè)人投入時(shí)間和金錢來(lái)啟動(dòng)它。如果沒有某種強(qiáng)制機(jī)制——比如工會(huì)的強(qiáng)制性會(huì)費(fèi)——沒有人會(huì)站出來(lái)，因?yàn)檫@會(huì)讓他們付出很多，得到很少。

Smaller groups have an easier time overcoming this issue, he argued. If there are only five big tractor makers, each one gets a fifth of the total benefit of forming a tractor lobby, which is often enough to cooperate. By contrast, organizing consumers is harder, because each individual can expect to gain only a tiny fraction of the payoffs for their effort.?

他認(rèn)為，較小的團(tuán)體更容易克服這個(gè)問題。如果只有五家大的拖拉機(jī)制造商，每家都能從組建拖拉機(jī)游說(shuō)團(tuán)體的總收益中獲得五分之一，這通常足以讓他們合作。相比之下，組織消費(fèi)者的難度更大，因?yàn)槊總€(gè)人預(yù)計(jì)只能從自己的努力中獲得很小一部分回報(bào)。

Olson also argued that interest groups have an incentive to try and get more of the existing economic pie for themselves rather than to grow it. In?Rise and Decline,?he wrote that “The familiar image of slicing the social pie does not really capture the essence of the situation; it is perhaps better to think of wrestlers struggling over the contents of a china shop.”?

奧爾森還認(rèn)為，利益集團(tuán)有動(dòng)機(jī)試圖分得更多現(xiàn)有的經(jīng)濟(jì)蛋糕，而不是將蛋糕做大。他在《興衰》中寫道：“切社會(huì)蛋糕的熟悉形象并沒有真正抓住情況的本質(zhì)；也許我們更應(yīng)該想象摔跤手在爭(zhēng)搶瓷器店的東西?！?/p>

So small, homogenous groups would organize. Large, diverse groups would struggle to organize. And the small, organized groups would then lobby to get the rules of the economy tilted in their favor — at everyone else's expense. (These ideas were the focus of his earlier book,?The Logic of Collective Action.)

因此，小型、同質(zhì)化的群體會(huì)組織起來(lái)。大型、多樣化的群體難以組織起來(lái)。然后，小型的、有組織的群體會(huì)進(jìn)行游說(shuō)，讓經(jīng)濟(jì)規(guī)則向有利于他們的方向傾斜——以其他所有人的利益為代價(jià)。這些想法是他早期著作《集體行動(dòng)的邏輯》(The Logic of Collective Action)的重點(diǎn)。

In?Rise and Decline, Olson added one more provocative premise: The longer a society is stable and prosperous, the more time there is for special interests to overcome the barriers to organizing. And as the number of organized lobbies grows, they collectively “slow down a society's capacity to adopt new technologies and to reallocate resources in response to changing conditions and thereby reduce the rate of economic growth.” Olson's renewed relevance stems from the fact that his diagnosis matches Andreessen's critique: The U.S. economy is inflexible and stagnant because so many special interest groups have had time to form and amass power.

在《興衰》中，奧爾森增加了一個(gè)更具啟發(fā)性的前提：一個(gè)社會(huì)穩(wěn)定和繁榮的時(shí)間越長(zhǎng)，特殊利益集團(tuán)就越有時(shí)間克服組織起來(lái)的障礙。而隨著有組織的游說(shuō)團(tuán)體數(shù)量越來(lái)越多，它們會(huì)共同“減緩一個(gè)社會(huì)采用新技術(shù)以及根據(jù)不斷變化的條件重新分配資源的能力，從而降低了經(jīng)濟(jì)增長(zhǎng)的速度”。奧爾森新的相關(guān)性源于這樣一個(gè)事實(shí)，即他的診斷與安德里森的批評(píng)相吻合：美國(guó)經(jīng)濟(jì)之所以缺乏靈活性并停滯不前，是因?yàn)樵S多特殊利益集團(tuán)有時(shí)間形成和積聚力量。

Olson believed his theory helped explain why the U.S. and the UK were struggling at the time he was writing, while Japan and Germany were growing rapidly. World War II hadn't just ended lives and destroyed factories and machinery; it had swept away the organized lobbies that build up over time in any economy and throttle its growth. The losers of the Second World War were starting over economically, and so weren't held back by collusion and lobbying. In the U.S., the theory helped explain why New York City?nearly went bankrupt in 1975?while the economies of the Western states soared. Growth happened in places where interest groups hadn't yet had a chance to form.?

奧爾森認(rèn)為，他的理論有助于解釋為何在他寫作的時(shí)候，美國(guó)和英國(guó)正在掙扎，而日本和德國(guó)卻在快速增長(zhǎng)。二戰(zhàn)不僅終結(jié)了生命，摧毀了工廠和機(jī)器；它還掃除了有組織的游說(shuō)團(tuán)體，這些團(tuán)體在任何經(jīng)濟(jì)體中隨著時(shí)間的流逝壯大起來(lái)，扼殺了其增長(zhǎng)。二戰(zhàn)的戰(zhàn)敗國(guó)在經(jīng)濟(jì)上重新開始，因此沒有受勾結(jié)和游說(shuō)所抑制。在美國(guó)，這一理論有助于解釋為何紐約市在1975年幾近破產(chǎn)，而西部各州的經(jīng)濟(jì)卻在飆升。增長(zhǎng)發(fā)生在利益集團(tuán)還沒有機(jī)會(huì)形成的地方。

Today, as the U.S. limps from crisis to crisis, amid?slow productivity growth, high inequality, and increasing political dysfunction, Olson's critique feels urgently relevant. “Thirty years later Olson seems prescient, and I seem naive,” Glaeser writes in his introduction. “America (and most of the wealthy world) has evolved in exactly the manner that Olson predicted. Interest groups, such as homeowners who block new construction and retirees who oppose any cost-saving reform of Medicare, have become ever more entrenched. Regulations that protect insiders, such as occupational licensing requirements for interior decorators and florists, have proliferated. New business formation plummeted between the 1980s and the 2010s.”?

今天，當(dāng)美國(guó)在生產(chǎn)力增長(zhǎng)緩慢、不平等嚴(yán)重和政治功能日益失調(diào)的情況下，在一個(gè)接一個(gè)的危機(jī)中舉步維艱時(shí)，奧爾森的批判讓人感到正好切中要害。

“30年后，奧爾森看起來(lái)有先見之明，而我似乎很幼稚，”格萊澤在他的導(dǎo)言中寫道，“美國(guó)（以及富裕世界的大多數(shù)國(guó)家）的發(fā)展恰如奧爾森所預(yù)測(cè)的那樣。利益集團(tuán)，比如阻止新建工程的房主和反對(duì)任何節(jié)省成本的醫(yī)療保險(xiǎn)改革的退休人員，已經(jīng)變得更加根深蒂固。室內(nèi)裝潢師和花藝師執(zhí)業(yè)許可要求等保護(hù)業(yè)內(nèi)人士的法規(guī)激增。在20世紀(jì)80年代和21世紀(jì)10年代之間，新成立的企業(yè)驟減?！?/p>

Olson has adherents across the political spectrum. Last year, the libertarian economist Alex Tabarrok used?Rise and Decline?to?explain?the policy failures of liberal U.S. cities. In 2019, the left-leaning political scientist Henry Farrell?cited the book?to explain Elizabeth Warren's worldview:?

奧爾森在各個(gè)政治派別中都有擁躉。2021年，自由主義經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家亞歷克斯·塔巴羅克(Alex Tabarrok)用《興衰》來(lái)解釋美國(guó)自由主義城市的政策失敗。2019年，左傾政治學(xué)家亨利·法雷爾(Henry Farrell)引用該書來(lái)解釋伊麗莎白·沃倫(Elizabeth Warren)的世界觀：

What Elizabeth Warren is pursuing is very much an Olsonian view of how markets work: that drag and dross and corruption builds up and that in order to allow markets to achieve their full potential, you basically need to cleanse them at a certain point.

伊麗莎白·沃倫所追求的，在極大程度上是一種奧爾森式的市場(chǎng)運(yùn)作觀點(diǎn)：累贅、糟粕和腐敗會(huì)越積越多，為了讓市場(chǎng)實(shí)現(xiàn)其全部潛力，你基本上需要在某個(gè)時(shí)候?qū)λ鼈冞M(jìn)行清理。

(And swinging back to the right, it's hard not to think of “Drain the swamp” reading that diagnosis.)?

（再回到右翼，讀到這個(gè)診斷的時(shí)候，很難不讓人想到“排干沼澤”。）

But was Olson actually right? As intriguing as his thesis is, it has both methodological and empirical weaknesses.?

可是，奧爾森事實(shí)上是對(duì)的嗎？盡管他的論文很吸引人，但它在方法論上和實(shí)證性上都存在弱點(diǎn)。

Olson was ahead of his time in his use of game theory, which models the strategic interactions of rational individuals. But since then, economics has become more?empirical?and?behavioral, too — and as a result it is appropriately more humble about drawing sweeping conclusions from presumptions of rationality.

奧爾森在博弈論的運(yùn)用方面領(lǐng)先于他的時(shí)代，博弈論為理性個(gè)體的戰(zhàn)略互動(dòng)提供了模型?？墒?，自那以后，經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)也變得更加實(shí)證化和行為化——因此，它恰當(dāng)?shù)夭辉佥p易從理性的假設(shè)中得出過(guò)于籠統(tǒng)的結(jié)論。

For example, in 2009 the political economist Elinor Ostrom?won a Nobel Prize?for documenting the ways people deviated from narrow conceptions of rationality to cooperate with one another. She found that when groups could communicate and could form and assess each other's reputations, they were able overcome coordination challenges very similar to the ones Olson was writing about. It turns out that the logic Olson laid out for when groups do or don't organize only holds under certain circumstances.?

比如，2009年，政治經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家埃莉諾·奧斯特羅姆(Elinor Ostrom)因記錄了人們?nèi)绾纹x狹隘的理性概念而相互合作，獲得諾貝爾獎(jiǎng)。她發(fā)現(xiàn)，當(dāng)群體可以溝通，可以影響和評(píng)估彼此的聲譽(yù)時(shí)，他們就能夠克服那些非常類似奧爾森所寫的協(xié)調(diào)困難。事實(shí)證明，奧爾森針對(duì)團(tuán)體何時(shí)組織起來(lái)或何時(shí)不組織的邏輯只在某些情況下成立。

Then there's the fact that the single biggest geopolitical event of the last 40 years seems to directly cut against Olson's theory. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 is exactly the sort of shock to stability, prosperity, and political boundaries that Olson saw as wiping away interest groups. But the result was not economic dynamism —?it was the rapid rise of one of the world's most notorious oligarchies. Either factions aren't so easily swept away, even in severe crises, or time is not as crucial for forming interest groups; either way Olson's theory doesn't seem to fit. (Olson gave an account of the post-Soviet economies' struggles?here.)?

還有一個(gè)事實(shí)是，過(guò)去40年中最大的地緣政治事件似乎直接與奧爾森的理論相悖。1991年蘇聯(lián)的解體正是奧爾森眼中那種對(duì)穩(wěn)定、繁榮和政治邊界的沖擊，這種沖擊抹去了利益集團(tuán)。不過(guò)，結(jié)果不是經(jīng)濟(jì)活力——而是世界上最臭名昭著的寡頭政治之一的迅速崛起。要么是政治派別不那么輕易被掃除（即使在嚴(yán)重的危機(jī)中），要么是時(shí)間對(duì)于形成利益集團(tuán)并不那么關(guān)鍵；無(wú)論哪種情形，奧爾森的理論似乎都不適合。（奧爾森在此對(duì)后蘇聯(lián)經(jīng)濟(jì)體的掙扎進(jìn)行了敘述）。

For these reasons,?Rise and Decline?is best read?not as a precise account of the problems facing the U.S. economy but as a hypothesis or even a provocation. Many other?good?books?have documented the corrupting power of organized interest groups?— especially those representing businesses — and how they corrode an economy. Returning to Olson means returning to the question of how and why these groups form in the first place. And it raises the idea, however speculative, that these interest groups exact an even greater toll on an economy as it grows older. If nothing else, it's well worth reading to see one of the greatest political economists of the past 50 years try to think through many of the very problems now making headlines.??

由于這些原因，我們最好不要將《興衰》當(dāng)作是對(duì)美國(guó)經(jīng)濟(jì)所面臨問題的精確敘述來(lái)閱讀，而是將其作為一種假設(shè)，甚至是一種刺激。許多其他的好書都記錄了有組織的利益集團(tuán)——特別是那些代表企業(yè)的利益集團(tuán)——的腐敗力量，以及它們?nèi)绾胃g經(jīng)濟(jì)。重讀奧爾森，意味著回到這些團(tuán)體首先是如何以及為何形成的問題上。它引發(fā)了一個(gè)想法（無(wú)論這種想法多么具有推測(cè)性），即，隨著某一經(jīng)濟(jì)體的老化，這些利益集團(tuán)會(huì)對(duì)經(jīng)濟(jì)體造成更大的損失。就算沒有別的目的，這本書也很值得一讀，人們可以看看過(guò)去50年中最偉大的政治經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家之中有一位試圖思考的許多問題現(xiàn)在都成為了頭條新聞。

For his part, Olson was open about the limits to his analysis. His theory was sweeping, but he knew it didn't explain everything. And he was well aware that people didn't always hew to the maxims of game theory. He writes in?Rise and Decline?that “zealots” and “fanatics” will be willing to organize because they aren't concerned about the ROI. That means, effectively, that in Olson's world the most influential players in economic policy will be the selfishly rational and the fanatically irrational. That doesn't sound too far off.?

就他本人而言，奧爾森對(duì)其分析的局限性持開放態(tài)度。他的理論全面廣泛，但他知道它并不能解釋一切。而且他很清楚，人們并不總是遵守博弈論的準(zhǔn)則。他在《興衰》中寫道，“偏激分子”和“狂熱分子”會(huì)有組織起來(lái)的意愿，因?yàn)樗麄儾⒉魂P(guān)心投資回報(bào)率。這實(shí)際上意味著，在奧爾森的世界里，對(duì)經(jīng)濟(jì)政策最有影響力的參與者將是自私的理性者和狂熱的非理性者。這話聽起來(lái)并不久遠(yuǎn)。

沃爾特·弗里克是《哈佛商業(yè)評(píng)論》的特約編輯，他曾在此擔(dān)任HBR.org的高級(jí)編輯和副編輯。他曾是Quartz的執(zhí)行編輯，以及哈佛大學(xué)尼曼新聞基金會(huì)(Nieman Foundation for Journalism)的奈特訪問學(xué)者(Knight Visiting Fellow)和哈佛大學(xué)伯克曼·克萊因互聯(lián)網(wǎng)與社會(huì)中心(Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society)的會(huì)員。他還為《大西洋》《麻省理工科技評(píng)論》《波士頓環(huán)球報(bào)》和BBC等出版物撰稿。

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