面對變革 我們需要什麼樣的專家
In the aftermath of the Iranian revolution in 1979, the UK foreign secretary commissioned a secret internal inquiry into why British diplomats had failed to predict it. One problem, the report found, was that the embassy in Tehran had little contact with people beyond the elites around the shah.
1979年伊朗革命爆發後，時任英國外交大臣委託進行了一項祕密的內部調查：爲什麼英國外交官未能預測這場革命。調查報告發現，其中一個問題在於，除了伊朗國王周圍的精英人士，英國駐德黑蘭大使館很少與其他人士接觸。
Subsequent generations of diplomats have taken this lesson to heart. They prize what they call “ground truth”: how things really feel out there; what people are really thinking. One former ambassador to Iran used to check whether his staff’s shoes were dirty. “If not, I knew they hadn’t been getting out of the embassy and meeting people in town.”
後來的歷代英國外交官都將這一教訓牢記於心。他們高度重視所謂的“第一線真相”：外面的氣氛究竟是怎樣的；人們真正在想什麼。一位英國前駐伊朗大使會查看使館人員的鞋子髒不髒。“如果不髒的話，我就知道，他們沒有走出使館走訪城裏的民衆。”
The economics profession could learn from this. Look through a few spreadsheets on the UK economy in recent years and you might wonder why people have not been dancing in the streets. Unemployment is 5 per cent, the lowest in 11 years. Participation in the labour market is near a record high. Income inequality, far from rising, has actually declined since the financial crisis. Yet 52 per cent of voters have just chosen to leave the EU.
經濟學專業人士可以從中取經。查閱近幾年英國經濟的一些數據，你或許會納悶：爲什麼人們不在街上歡欣鼓舞？失業率只有5%，爲11年最低。勞動力市場參與率接近歷史高位。收入不平等程度非但沒有擴大，自金融危機以來實際上有所縮小。然而，52%的選民剛剛選擇脫離歐盟。
That group is far from homogeneous and many were motivated by topics that have nothing to do with economics. It is clear, though, that some voters felt they had been left behind by the modern economy and had nothing to lose.
支持退歐的羣體並不都是同一類人，其中許多人受到了與經濟因素無關的議題的推動。不過，明顯的是，一些選民感覺自己被現代經濟拋在後面，沒什麼可失去的。
Andy Haldane, the Bank of England’s chief economist, described last month how he encountered this “ground truth” when he met a group of charities in Nottingham, a former industrial city in the Midlands. When he started talking about the economic recovery they stopped him short. They did not see any evidence: homelessness, food bank use, mental health problems were all going up. “The language of ‘recovery’ simply did not fit their facts,” Mr Haldane said.
英國央行(BoE)首席經濟學家安迪•霍爾丹(Andy Haldane)上月描述道，當他在英格蘭中部的原工業城市諾丁漢與多個慈善組織開會時，他領教了“第一線真相”。當他開始談論經濟復甦時，他們打斷了他。他們看不到任何證據：無家可歸、食物賑濟庫(food bank)的利用、精神健康問題都在加重。“‘復甦’一詞根本不符合他們的實際情況，”霍爾丹說。
Some economists will flinch at the idea of taking “ground truth” too seriously. They will say — rightly — that anecdotal evidence is almost always unrepresentative and can lead to the wrong conclusions. But so can data if you rely on it too heavily. Combine the two and you can tease out where they differ. You can also find clues as to why.
一些經濟學家或許會對拿“第一線真相”太當回事不以爲然。他們會理由充分地說，軼事證據幾乎從來都不具備代表性，而且會導致錯誤的結論。但數據也是如此——如果你過於依賴它們的話。結合這兩種方式，就可以梳理出其中的區別。你還可以找到有關根本原因的線索。
A few months ago I went to Bolsover, a former mining town in Derbyshire whose economy looked fairly good on paper. Average wages were low but the proportion of people on jobless benefits had dropped below the UK average. Yet the man who ran the pub said he had made all his staff self-employed so he did not have to pay taxes or the minimum wage. The people in the church were giving sleeping bags to young men who had dropped off the benefits register and were living in disused garages. The women working in the shops said all the local retail jobs were part-time and the bus fare was too high to make it worth travelling to a full-time job elsewhere.
幾個月前，我去了德比郡(Derbyshire)一個曾經的煤礦小鎮博爾索弗(Bolsover)，那裏的經濟數據看上去相當不錯。平均工資很低，但申請失業救濟金的人口比例低於英國平均水平。但一位酒吧老闆稱，他已經讓所有員工都成了自僱者，這樣他就不必爲他們繳稅，也不必向他們支付最低工資。教會裏的人把睡袋送給已經拿不到救濟金、住在廢棄車庫裏的年輕男子。在商店工作的女士們表示，當地所有零售工作都是兼職的，而且因爲公共汽車票價太高，不值得去別處謀一份全職工作。
Statisticians do their best to capture these subtleties. But there is a limit to how much you can learn about the economy by staring at a spreadsheet in a London office. And the bits you miss might be the bits that matter.
統計人員盡最大努力捕捉這些細微之處。但一個坐在倫敦辦公室盯着電子表格的人，對經濟的瞭解終究是有限的。而你錯過的細節或許正是關鍵的細節。
Of course, there is “ground truth” to be gleaned from newspapers and other secondary sources, but there is no substitute for first-hand knowledge. Take Steve Eisman and his colleagues at the FrontPoint hedge fund. Michael Lewis, who wrote about them in The Big Short , described how they confirmed their hunch about the looming mortgage crisis in 2007 by flying to a glitzy subprime conference in Las Vegas. They chatted to the bankers, investors and rating agency guys who were making money from thin air. When they flew home, they doubled their bet against the US housing market.
當然，從報紙及其他二手資料中也可以收集到“第一線真相”，但第一手資料不可代替。以對衝基金FrontPoint的史蒂夫•艾斯曼(Steve Eisman)及其同事爲例。邁克爾•劉易斯(Michael Lewis)在《大空頭》(The Big Short)一書中描寫道，2007年他們飛往拉斯維加斯參加一場浮華的次貸會議，那段經歷使他們確信自己對次貸危機即將來臨的預感是正確的。他們與銀行家、投資者和評級機構的人士交談——那些人都在空手套白狼。飛回家後，他們把押注美國住宅市場崩盤的賭注增加了一倍。
Michael Gove, the pro-Brexit former government minister, was wrong when he said we have had enough of experts. As the UK navigates an uncertain future, we need experts more than ever. What we really need is experts with dirty shoes.
當支持退歐的前部長級官員邁克爾•戈夫(Michael Gove)稱我們已經聽夠了專家的高見時，他錯了。在英國把握一個不確定的未來之際，我們比以往任何時候都更需要專家。但我們真正需要的是接地氣的專家。
