Free exchange: Cut-price economics

自由匯兌：降價經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)

Prices for many goods do not move the way economists think they should

許多商品的價格并不像經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家認(rèn)為的那樣波動

When firms opt to tweak a product’s quality instead of its price, problems ensue

當(dāng)公司選擇調(diào)整產(chǎn)品的質(zhì)量而不是價格時，問題隨之而來

詞匯

Tweak/調(diào)整；擰，扭

Aug 8th 2019

TWO YEARS ago British chocoholics felt the pinch from the decision to leave the European Union. As sterling tumbled, global firms selling to the British market faced the same production costs as before, but got less money for each sweet sold. Rather than raise the price per chocolate, some chose to shrink the chocolate per price. The famous peaks on a bar of Toblerone grew conspicuously less numerous (though Mondelez, the bar’s maker, said Brexit was not the cause). Other products suffered the same “shrinkflation”: toilet rolls and toothpaste tubes became smaller. The threat of Brexit made the phenomenon more visible, but it is surprisingly common. Statisticians and policymakers need to take note.

兩年前，英國的巧克力愛好者感到了離開歐盟的壓力。隨著英鎊貶值，銷往英國市場的跨國公司面臨著和以前一樣的生產(chǎn)成本，但伴隨著每一份零食的賣出所得到的利潤額卻變少了。與其讓每塊巧克力價格上漲，一些商家選擇了保持價格但縮水巧克力。名氣最大銷量最高的三角牌巧克力條的需求數(shù)量在明顯的放緩， (盡管該棒狀巧克力的制造商億滋(Mondelez)表示，英國脫歐不是原因)。其他產(chǎn)品也遭遇了同樣的“縮水”:廁紙和牙膏管變小了。英國退歐的威脅讓這一現(xiàn)象更加明顯，但它卻出奇地普遍。統(tǒng)計學(xué)家和政策制定者需要注意這一點(diǎn)。

詞匯

Sterling/英鎊（英國貨幣）；標(biāo)準(zhǔn)純銀

Tumble/摔倒；倒塌；（價格或數(shù)量）暴跌，驟降

Conspicuously/顯著地，明顯地

Shrinkflation/縮水式通脹

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Every first-year economics student quickly becomes familiar with charts of supply and demand, which place price on one axis and quantity on the other. Given a drop in demand, the charts show, firms can either sell fewer items at the prevailing price or cut prices to prop up sales. But online retailing, which makes it easier to collect fine-grained price data, reveals how poorly textbook models reflect real-world market dynamics. The prices of consumer goods, it turns out, behave oddly.

每一個經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)一年級的學(xué)生很快就會熟悉供求關(guān)系圖，即價格在一條軸上，數(shù)量在另一條軸上。圖表顯示，在需求下降的情況下，企業(yè)要么以當(dāng)前價格出售更少的產(chǎn)品，要么降價以提振銷售。但是在線銷售，使得收集詳細(xì)的價格數(shù)據(jù)變得更加容易，數(shù)據(jù)揭示了在真實(shí)的動態(tài)市場下，教科書的模型是多么的欠缺。事實(shí)證明，消費(fèi)品的價格反映得很奇怪。

詞匯

fine-grained/詳細(xì)的；深入的；微粒的

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A forthcoming paper by Diego Aparicio and Roberto Rigobon of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology helps make the point. Firms that sell thousands of different items do not offer them at thousands of different prices, but rather slot them into a dozen or two price points. Visit the website for H&M, a fashion retailer, and you will find a staggering array of items for ￡9.99: hats, scarves, jewellery, belts, bags, herringbone braces, satin neckties, patterned shirts for dogs and much more. Another vast collection of items cost ￡6.99, and another, ￡12.99. When sellers change an item’s price, they tend not to nudge it a little, but rather to re-slot it into one of the pre-existing price categories. The authors dub this phenomenon “quantum pricing” (quantum mechanics grew from the observation that the properties of subatomic particles do not vary along a continuum, but rather fall into discrete states).

麻省理工學(xué)院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)的迭戈?阿帕里西奧(Diego Aparicio)和羅伯托?里戈邦(Roberto Rigobon)即將發(fā)表的一篇論文有助于闡明這一點(diǎn)。銷售數(shù)千種不同商品的公司不會以數(shù)千種不同的價格銷售，而是把它們分成12到2個價格點(diǎn)。訪問H&M(一家時尚零售商)的網(wǎng)站，你會發(fā)現(xiàn)一大堆令人震驚的9.99英鎊的商品:帽子、圍巾、珠寶、腰帶、包、人字形背帶、緞子領(lǐng)帶、狗狗圖案襯衫等等。另一大批貨物的售價分別為6.99英鎊和12.99英鎊。當(dāng)賣家改變一件商品的價格時，他們往往不會稍加調(diào)整，而是把它重新放入已經(jīng)存在的價格類別中。作者將這一現(xiàn)象稱為“量子定價”(量子力學(xué)源于亞原子粒子的性質(zhì)并不沿著連續(xù)體變化，而是處于離散狀態(tài))。

詞匯

Nudge/輕推；勸說【nudge marketing?鼓勵型市場營銷手段】

Quantum/量子論；額（特指定額、定量）

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Just as surprising as the quantum way in which prices adjust is how rarely they move at all. Retailers, Messrs Aparicio and Rigobon suggest, seem to design products to fit their preferred price points. Given a big enough shift in market conditions, such as an increase in labour costs, firms often redesign a product to fit the price rather than tweak the price. They may make a production process less labour-intensive—or shave a bit off a chocolate bar.

價格調(diào)整和量子方式一樣令人驚訝的點(diǎn)在于價格很少變動。阿帕里西奧和里戈邦認(rèn)為，零售商似乎是根據(jù)自己喜歡的價格點(diǎn)來設(shè)計產(chǎn)品的?？紤]到市場環(huán)境的巨大變化，比如勞動力成本的增加，公司通常會根據(jù)價格重新設(shè)計產(chǎn)品，而不是調(diào)整價格。他們可能會降低生產(chǎn)過程的勞動強(qiáng)度，或者減少一塊巧克力。

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Central banks are starting to see the consequences. Inflation does not respond to economic conditions as much as it used to. (To take one example, deflation during the Great Recession was surprisingly mild and short-lived, and after nearly three years of unemployment below 5%, American inflation still trundles along below the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2%.) In its recently published annual report the Bank for International Settlements, a club of central banks, mused that quantum pricing and related phenomena help account for such trends.

各國央行開始看到結(jié)果。通貨膨脹對經(jīng)濟(jì)狀況的作用不如過去那么強(qiáng)烈了。(舉個例子，大蕭條時期的通貨緊縮出奇的溫和和短暫，在失業(yè)率低于5%的近三年之后，美國的通貨膨脹率仍然低于美聯(lián)儲2%的目標(biāo)。)央行分支之一——國際清算銀行(Bank for International Settlements)在最近發(fā)布的年度報告中沉思道，量子定價和相關(guān)現(xiàn)象有助于解釋這種趨勢。

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But firms’ aversion to increasing prices may be as much a consequence of limp inflation as a contributor to it. When the price of everything rises a lot year after year, as in the 1970s and 1980s, firms can easily adjust the real, inflation-adjusted cost of their wares without putting off shoppers. A 5.5% jump in the cost of a pint after years of 5% increases does not send beer drinkers searching for other pubs in the way that a 0.5% hike after years of no change might. Thus falling inflation can make prices “stickier”. To compensate, firms instead find other ways to impose costs on buyers—such as making products smaller or lower-quality.

但是，企業(yè)對物價上漲的反感可能是疲軟的通貨膨脹造成的，而不是通貨膨脹的原因之一。就像上世紀(jì)七八十年代一樣，當(dāng)所有商品的價格年復(fù)一年地大幅上漲時，企業(yè)可以輕松地調(diào)整商品經(jīng)通脹調(diào)整后的實(shí)際成本，而不會嚇跑消費(fèi)者。一品脫啤酒的價格在經(jīng)歷了多年5%的上漲后上漲了5.5%，但這并沒有讓喝啤酒的人去尋找其他酒吧，而在多年沒有變化的情況下，啤酒價格上漲0.5%或許會起到同樣的作用。因此，不斷下降的通貨膨脹會使價格“更具粘性”。為了彌補(bǔ)這一缺陷，企業(yè)轉(zhuǎn)而尋找其他方式來迫使消費(fèi)者承擔(dān)成本，比如將產(chǎn)品做得更小或質(zhì)量更差。

詞匯

Aversion/厭惡；反感

Compensate/補(bǔ)償，賠償；抵消

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Labour markets are affected, too. Wages are notoriously sticky, especially downwards. In a world of low inflation, the ability to trim pay by raising wages less than inflation is lost to firms, with serious macroeconomic consequences. Economists blame sticky wages for causing unemployment during recessions. Facing reduced demand, firms that cannot cut pay to maintain margins while slashing prices instead reduce output—and sack workers.

勞動力市場也受到了影響。眾所周知，工資是有粘性的，尤其是越往下時。在一個低通脹的世界里，企業(yè)失去了通過提高低于通脹水平的工資來削減薪酬的能力，從而導(dǎo)致嚴(yán)重的宏觀經(jīng)濟(jì)后果。經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家將經(jīng)濟(jì)衰退期間的失業(yè)歸咎于粘性工資。面對減少的需求，那些不能通過降低薪酬來在價格下跌的市場下維持利潤的企業(yè)選擇了減少產(chǎn)量，并且解雇工人。

詞匯

Slash/大幅度裁減或削減

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But nimble firms have other options: the employment version of shaving a bit of chocolate from the bar. Some cut costs by boosting output per worker, often by driving workers harder. Tellingly, growth in output per worker now tends to fall in booms and rise during busts, precisely the opposite of the pattern 40 years ago, when inflation was high. Firms can respond to market pressures by reducing the benefits available to workers; Asda, a supermarket, recently announced plans to slash British workers’ holiday allowances. Or they can offer workers more tortuous schedules. Research published in 2017 suggests that being able to vary workers’ hours from week to week is worth at least 20% of their wages. On the flipside, during good times firms often opt to reward workers with office perks and one-off bonuses, rather than pay rises that cannot easily be clawed back during downturns.

但靈活的公司還有其他選擇:從雇員的層面來說——在巧克力棒上拿走一點(diǎn)巧克力。一些公司通過提高每個工人的產(chǎn)量來削減成本，通常是通過提高工人的工作效率。很能說明問題的是，現(xiàn)在人均產(chǎn)出的增長趨勢是在繁榮時期下跌，在蕭條時期暴增，這與40年前通脹高企時的模式正好相反。企業(yè)可以通過減少工人的福利來應(yīng)對市場壓力;Asda超市最近宣布了削減英國工人假期津貼的計劃?；蛘咚麄兛梢詾閱T工提供更曲折的工作時間安排。2017年發(fā)表的一項研究表明，每周改變員工的工作時間至少相當(dāng)于他們工資的20%。另一方面，在經(jīng)濟(jì)繁榮時期，公司往往選擇用辦公室津貼和一次性獎金來獎勵員工，而不是在經(jīng)濟(jì)低迷時期難以收回的加薪。

詞匯

Nimble/敏捷的；聰明的

Flipside/另一面；反面

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The uncertainty principle

測不準(zhǔn)原理

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If it happens on a sufficiently large scale, the practice of tweaking quality in lieu of price could play havoc with essential economic data. Statistical agencies do their best to account for changing product quality, but if adjustments are unexpectedly common or subtle then muted inflation figures could easily be concealing a more turbulent economic picture. Central banks watching for big swings in inflation or wage growth as a sign of trouble could be reacting to figures that bear far less relation to business conditions than they used to.

如果這種情況發(fā)生在足夠大的規(guī)模內(nèi)，調(diào)整質(zhì)量而不是價格的做法，可能會對重要的經(jīng)濟(jì)數(shù)據(jù)造成嚴(yán)重破壞。統(tǒng)計機(jī)構(gòu)盡其所能解釋產(chǎn)品質(zhì)量的變化，但如果調(diào)整出人意料地普遍或微妙，那么溫和的通脹數(shù)據(jù)很容易掩蓋更為動蕩的經(jīng)濟(jì)形勢。各國央行正密切關(guān)注通脹或工資增長的大幅波動，將其視為出現(xiàn)問題的跡象，可能會對那些與商業(yè)環(huán)境關(guān)系遠(yuǎn)不如以前的數(shù)據(jù)作出反應(yīng)。

詞匯

Lieu/代替；場所

Havoc/大破壞；浩劫；蹂躪

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What’s more, the substitution of quality for price as firms’ main way of responding to changing market conditions weakens the case for keeping inflation low and stable. Inflation makes relative prices less informative, economists reckon, making it harder to decide what to buy and how to spend. Rather than clarity, low inflation has brought a different sort of confusion: one of shrinking chocolate bars and lost holidays.

更重要的是，公司應(yīng)對市場環(huán)境變化的主要方式是用質(zhì)量代替價格，這削弱了保持低通脹和穩(wěn)定的理由。經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家認(rèn)為，通貨膨脹使得相對價格的信息含量降低，使得決定買什么和如何消費(fèi)變得更加困難。低通脹非但沒有帶來明確的結(jié)果，反而帶來了另一種困惑:巧克力棒的縮水和假期的減少。

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