寫在前面的話：大家好啊，英語、日語的譯文都是up主自己譯的，難免會有錯誤或者是理解歧義，大家發(fā)現(xiàn)了請指出來呀！還有譯的比較生硬的地方，請大家多多溝通，幫助我成長。

A social turn--Hard work and black swans?

To explain wealth and poverty, the ideas of the earliest economists are being revisited and improved

But an interest in culture remained and indeed is now making a comeback. Since the 198os datasets such as the World Values Survey and the General Social Survey have made it easier to quantitatively measure cultural preferences and relate them to economic outcomes. Top economic journals now regularly include papers on the importance of culture. Even many hardline wonks?have come to realise the limits to pure economic reasoning.

wonk ?n. /w??k/

1.?一味苦干的人；書呆子；2. 死摳政策細枝末節(jié)的人??the President's chief economic policy wonk 總統(tǒng)的首席經(jīng)濟問題策士

Perhaps the most influential text in the revival of cultural economics was “Making Democracy Work”, a book from 1993 by Robert Putnam. Mr Putnam tried to understand why for many decades northern Italy had been richer than the south, folding the explanation under the catch-all term social capital People in the south were fiercely loyal to their family, but more distrustful of outsiders whereas in the north people were happier to form connections with strangers, Mr Putnam argued. In the north people read more newspapers, were more likely to participate in sports and cultural associations, and voted more frequently in?referendums. This, the theory went, contributed to better local government and more efficient economic transactions, which in turn produced greater wealth though Mr Putnam was not clear about the precise mechanism by which one thing led to the other.

referendum ?n. /?ref??rend?m/ ?~ (on sth) ?全民投票；全民公決? Ireland decided to hold a referendum on divorce. 愛爾蘭決定就離婚問題進行全民投票。

A group of researchers, largely dominated by Italians who were inspired by Mr Putnam’s work, has since extended his ideas, seeking cultural explanations of why some areas are rich and others poor. A paper from 2004 by Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza and Luigi Zingales, also looking at Italy, finds that in high-social-capital?areas, households invest less in cash and more in stocks, and make less use of informal credit. In areas where people do not really trust those outside their family, it may be hard to form large business organisations which can benefit from economies of scale and which can drive the adoption of new technologies. This suggests that it is no coincidence that the average business in Lombardy, a rich northern region in Italy, has 13 employees, compared with five in Calabria, a poor southern one.

social-capital：根據(jù)世界銀行社會資本協(xié)會(the world bank's social capital initiative)的界定,廣義的社會資本是指政府和市民社會為了一個組織的相互利益而采取的集體行動,該組織小至一個家庭,大至一個國家。

?Lombardy：倫巴第大區(qū)（意大利地名）? ? Calabria：卡拉布利亞（意大利地名）

Others look beyond Italy. In “A Culture of Growth”, published in 2016, Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University puts the “principle of contestability” as the reason why some countries industrialised but others did not. Organisations such as the Royal Society, founded in London in 1660, were forums for the exchange? of ideas, where people put forward their discoveries and fiercely interrogated the theories of others. Crucially, too, over time the goal of western European science shifted from one concerned with the “mindless piling up of empirical facts”, as?Mr Mokyr puts it, towards discoveries which could be put to use in the real world. Scientific inquiry laid the groundwork for European economic exceptionalism. Nothing quite comparable happened in other parts of the world.

?Contestability：可競爭性

interrogate v. ??/?n?ter?ɡe?t/??1.訊問；審問；盤問??He was interrogated by the police for over 12 hours. 他被警察審問了12個多小時。2.( technical 術語 )（在計算機或其他機器上）查詢，詢問

Culture club

The revival of cultural explanations for wealth and poverty seems to be a methodological step forward. Yet it raises two big questions. The first concerns the origins of cultural traits: where do they come from? The second is why people from apparently similar cultures sometimes have very different economic outcomes. To answer these questions, economists have come to appreciate the importance of history and, in particular, historical accident.

Revival??n. /r??va?vl/ ?

1.（狀況或力量的）進步，振興，復蘇??the revival of trade 貿(mào)易振興??an economic revival 經(jīng)濟復蘇

2.復興；再流行??a religious revival 宗教的奮興

3.（戲劇的）重演??a revival of Peter Shaffer's ‘Equus’ 彼得?謝弗的《馬》的重演

Take first the question of the origin of cultural traits. Some research suggests that they are the product of changes which took place hundreds of years ago. A 2013 paper by the late Alberto Ales ma and two of his colleagues looks at why countries have very different rates of female labour-force participation. Egypt and Namibia are about as rich as each other, but the share of Namibian women in the labour force is more than twice that of Egyptian women. The paper puts such differences largely down to differences in pre-industrial agriculture and environmental conditions. Plough?cultivation, common in Egypt, required lots of upper-body strength so men were at an advantage. Shifting cultivation, more common in Namibia, used hand-held tools like the hoe which suited women better. The effect of these agricultural technologies echoes in statistics today.

Namibia /n??m?bi?/ 納米比亞（非洲南部國家）

plough ?/pla?/? 名詞?1.?犁；2.the Plough ( BrE ) 北斗七星；大熊星座? 動詞 1.?犁（田）；耕（地）；翻（土）?ploughed fields 犁過的田地

習語：

1.?plough a lonely, your own, etc., ?furrow 自耕孤疇（指自行其是或自得其樂）

2. under the ?plough： ( of land 土地 ) 用于耕作的；作農(nóng)田的

譯文

But an interest in culture remained and indeed is now making a comeback. Since the 198os datasets such as the World Values Survey and the General Social Survey have made it easier to quantitatively measure cultural preferences and relate them to economic outcomes. Top economic journals now regularly include papers on the importance of culture. Even many?hardline wonks?have come to realise the limits to pure economic reasoning.

但是對文化的興趣依舊存在，如今東山再起。從上世紀八十年代，數(shù)據(jù)集如“世界價值標準調(diào)查”、“一般社會調(diào)查”等讓文化因素更容易用定量方式衡量文化偏好與經(jīng)濟結果。頂級經(jīng)濟學雜志現(xiàn)在也經(jīng)?？菑娬{(diào)文化重要性的文章。甚至很多強硬的學究也意識到純粹經(jīng)濟推論的局限。

Perhaps the most influential text in the revival of cultural economics was “Making Democracy Work”, a book from 1993 by Robert Putnam. Mr Putnam tried to understand why for many decades northern Italy had been richer than the south, folding the explanation under the catch-all term social capital People in the south were fiercely loyal to their family, but more distrustful of outsiders whereas in the north people were happier to form connections with strangers, Mr Putnam argued. In the north people read more newspapers, were more likely to participate in sports and cultural associations, and voted more frequently in?referendums.?This, the theory went, contributed to better local government and more efficient economic transactions, which in turn produced greater wealth though Mr Putnam was not clear about the precise mechanism by which one thing led to the other.

或許文化經(jīng)濟學復興最有影響力的主題是“使民主運轉(zhuǎn)”，1993年羅伯特·普特曼所著之書。普特曼先生幾十年來一直嘗試解釋為什么意大利北部比南部富裕，他將原因歸于寬泛的概念“社會資本”--意大利南部人對家族非常忠誠但缺乏對外來人士的信任而北部人很喜歡結交外來人士。北部人更加喜歡閱讀報紙、喜歡參加運動和文化組織，更積極的投票參與社會活動。這是普特曼理論解釋的地方，這些群體行為有助于更好的地方治理和有效的經(jīng)濟交易，從而創(chuàng)造更多的財富。雖然普特曼并不了解雙方究竟誰是因果及精確的運行機制。

A group of researchers, largely dominated by Italians who were inspired by Mr Putnam’s work, has since extended his ideas, seeking cultural explanations of why some areas are rich and others poor. A paper from 2004 by Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza and Luigi Zingales, also looking at Italy, finds that in high-social-capital?areas, households invest less in cash and more in stocks, and make less use of informal credit. In areas where people do not really trust those outside their family, it may be hard to form large business organisations which can benefit from economies of scale and which can drive the adoption of new technologies. This suggests that it is no coincidence that the average business in Lombardy, a rich northern region in Italy, has 13 employees, compared with five in Calabria, a poor southern one.

一群學者，大部分是意大利學者被普特曼研究所啟發(fā)，開始拓展他的觀點，尋找地區(qū)貧富差距的文化解釋。2004年Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza?和Luigi Zingales三人的論文，也是研究意大利，發(fā)現(xiàn)社會資本高度發(fā)展的區(qū)域，家庭現(xiàn)金投資少，股份多，不經(jīng)常使用非正規(guī)信貸。而在不怎么相信親人之外的區(qū)域比較難發(fā)展大的商業(yè)組織。這些商業(yè)組織能夠從規(guī)模經(jīng)濟中獲利并且推動新科技的應用。這表明倫巴第（意大利行政區(qū)名）富有并且平均企業(yè)雇員13人，而卡拉布利亞（意大利行政區(qū)名）相對貧窮，平均企業(yè)雇員5人并不是巧合。

Others look beyond Italy. In “A Culture of Growth”, published in 2016, Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University puts the “principle of?contestability” as the reason why some countries industrialised but others did not. Organisations such as the Royal Society, founded in London in 1660, were forums for the exchange? of ideas, where people put forward their discoveries and fiercely?interrogated?the theories of others. Crucially, too, over time the goal of western European science shifted from one concerned with the “mindless piling up of empirical facts”, as?Mr Mokyr puts it, towards discoveries which could be put to use in the real world. Scientific inquiry laid the groundwork for European economic exceptionalism. Nothing quite comparable happened in other parts of the world.

其他的學者研究不局限于意大利。在2016年發(fā)表的《增長的文化》一文中，西北大學Joel Mokyr?將“可競爭性法則”列為一些國家能夠工業(yè)化的原因。例如英國皇家學會，1660年倫敦成立，初衷是建立交流論壇，這里的人提出自己的發(fā)現(xiàn)，激情咨詢著他人的理論。經(jīng)過多年發(fā)展，像這類組織在西歐科學從“無意識的經(jīng)驗積累科學”轉(zhuǎn)向可以進入應用現(xiàn)實社會的發(fā)現(xiàn)科學起到了關鍵作用。科學探究為歐洲經(jīng)濟的例外性奠定了基石。在世界其他地方?jīng)]有發(fā)生過類似的事情。

Culture club

The?revival?of cultural explanations for wealth and poverty seems to be a methodological step forward. Yet it raises two big questions. The first concerns the origins of cultural traits: where do they come from? The second is why people from apparently similar cultures sometimes have very different economic outcomes. To answer these questions, economists have come to appreciate the importance of history and, in particular, historical accident.

文化釋義貧富的復興看起來像是方法論的前進。但它提出了兩個問題。第一個關注點是文化特質(zhì)的起源：他們從何而來？第二個是為什么相似文化區(qū)域的人有時會產(chǎn)生截然不同的經(jīng)濟結果？為回答這些問題，經(jīng)濟學家們需要感謝歷史，尤其是歷史偶變。

Take first the question of the origin of cultural traits. Some research suggests that they are the product of changes which took place hundreds of years ago. A 2013 paper by the late Alberto Ales ma and two of his colleagues looks at why countries have very different rates of female labour-force participation. Egypt and?Namibia?are about as rich as each other, but the share of Namibian women in the labour force is more than twice that of Egyptian women. The paper puts such differences largely down to differences in pre-industrial agriculture and environmental conditions.?Plough?cultivation, common in Egypt, required lots of upper-body strength so men were at an advantage. Shifting cultivation, more common in Namibia, used hand-held tools like the hoe which suited women better. The effect of these agricultural technologies echoes in statistics today.

第一個問題文化特質(zhì)的起源。一些研究認為這是歷史變化的結果。2013年Alberto Ales ma?與他的兩位同事發(fā)表論文，他們研究為什么國家的女性就業(yè)率存在巨大的差異。埃及與納米比亞國家財力相當，但是納米比亞的女性勞力占比是埃及的兩倍以上。論文認為該差距主要由工業(yè)化前的農(nóng)業(yè)及環(huán)境造成的。用犁耕作，埃及很普遍，需要大量的上肢力量，這樣男性具有優(yōu)勢。倫墾，納米比亞很普遍，用手持工具，如鋤頭等與女性比較契合。這些早前農(nóng)業(yè)技術的應用造成的影響與現(xiàn)今的統(tǒng)計遙相呼應。（up主覺得這個學者的例子有些不符合，①用鋤頭并不是女性更合適，而是相較于以前，女性用起來更容易，其實還是男性更合適。②埃及的宗教對女性就業(yè)的影響更強一些。個人觀點。）