---- FT 的標題翻譯總要添油加醋 Lex專欄：諾貝爾獎沒“惡搞” Lex_Nobel in economics The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has a mischievous bent. At a time when everyone including the Queen of England wonders why economists did not anticipate the financial crisis and still cannot agree a cure, the academy awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize (it is not technically a Nobel) to two American professors synonymous with economic modelling. It is popular to question Thomas Sargent's line of work these days. In the 1970s, he revelled in the complex economic models that were the foundation of the so-called dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models now ubiquitous in central bank decision making. More important, he introduced into these models the burgeoning field of rational expectations – another idea increasingly under fire.
瑞典皇家科學院(Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences)可真是喜歡“惡搞”。就在包括英國女王在內的所有人都想知道，為何經濟學家未能預見到金融危機、甚至到現在都拿不出一致對策的時候，瑞典皇家科學院卻將諾貝爾經濟學獎（Sveriges Riksbank Prize，嚴格說來，這並非諾貝爾獎）授予了兩位堪稱“經濟建模代名詞”的美國教授。這段時間，質疑托馬斯•薩金特(Thomas Sargent)所從事職業的做法已經十分流行。上世紀70年代，薩金特沉迷於復雜的經濟模型，建立了所謂的動態隨機一般均衡模型(DSGE)。如今，央行在進行決策時都要用到這些模型。而更重要的是，他在這些模型中引入了當時剛開始興起的理性預期——這在眼下已經成為又一個越發受到抨擊的觀點。
But to blame the current economic problems in the US or Europe on policymakers' over-reliance on models is unfair. Few think neuroscientific research is pointless just because we still know so little about the brain. In a speech last year, Christopher Sims, the co-prize winner, highlighted the many academics now focused on improving these models to understand better how financial shocks affect the economy. A little late, but a worthy aim nevertheless.
Forecasting will remain hard. Each crisis, however, brings more data to analyse. Prof Sims, for example, won his gong for advancing the crunching of numbers to draw out causes and effects of economic changes or shocks. This is useful stuff, whatever its predictive power. Both laureates have advanced their early work. Prof Sargent now recognises that people get confused sometimes, while Prof Sim models the fact that we all can only take in so much information while thinking about the future.
**** 據說他們的方法已入教科書 據孤陋者如筆者 Simon 先生從公共事務 如都市再生和規劃等 解釋所謂"理性預期理論（rational expectations）"
American Economists Win Nobel Prize Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims are credited with uncovering the two-way relationship between government policy and the economy. By Josh Voorhees | Posted Monday, Oct. 10, 2011, at 10:05 AM ET
Two Americans were awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in economics on Monday for their research into the cause-and-effect relationship between economic policy and the broader economy as a whole.
The two men, Thomas Sargent of New York University and Christopher Sims of Princeton University, carried out their research independently in the 1970s and ‘80s, but their work “is highly relevant today as world governments and central banks seek ways to steer their economies away from another recession,” the Associated Press reports.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that awards the prize said the two economists, both 68, had developed methods for answering questions such as how GDP and inflation are affected by temporary interest rate hikes or a tax cut.
"Today, the methods developed by Sargent and Sims are essential tools in macroeconomic analysis," the academy said in its citation.
Here’s how the New York Timessummed up their research: “Their work uses statistical analysis to disentangle the question of whether a policy change that happened in the past affected the economy or whether it was made in anticipation of events that policymakers thought would happen later. This research has also helped economists better understand how people’s expectations for policy affect the economy.”
