对林毅夫新结构经济学的三个思考(凯闻)

Last week I accompanied the World Bank President Jim Yong Kim in his visit to Beijing to meet with China's new top leadership. During one of the meetings in Beijing, Vice Premier Li Keqiang stressed to us the importance for China to break out from the middle income trap. The middle income trap has also been on the mind of my good friend and former World Bank colleague Justin Lin, who just proposed 'the third wave of development thinking' known as the new structural economics.

上周，笔者陪同世界银行行长金墉来北京拜访中国新的领导层。在和国务院副总理李克强的会见中，李克强特别强调了中国摆脱中等收入陷阱的重要性。最近，林毅夫教授刚好在为发展中国家摆脱中等收入陷阱献计献策。他提出的新结构经济学框架被称为“发展经济学3.0版本。

When I met up with Justin last week at one of the official dinners in Beijing, I congratulated him for the three books he published since June, when he returned to Beijing after successfully completing his term in DC as the World Bank's Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. It turned out that I was wrong and Justin is actually publishing five books, not three. The framework of new structural economics that Justin has proposed in these books has provoked heated discussions both in China and internationally.

林毅夫教授今年六月刚刚结束了在世界银行担任高级副总裁和首席经济学家的四年任期。上周在北京的一个晚宴上碰到林毅夫教授时，我先向他表示祝贺，因为我听说他从世行卸任后短短几个月内已经出版了三本新书。一聊才知道我的数据有误，林毅夫教授实际上出版了五本新书。他在这些新书中提出了新结构经济学的框架，在国内和国际经济学界上引起了热烈的讨论。

Justin argues that a country's industrial makeup is the product of its intrinsic strengths and advantages determined by its 'factor endowments', including its workforce, natural resources, or human and physical capital. More importantly, in his framework, while competitive market should be the economy's fundamental mechanism for resource allocation at each stage of its development, the role of 'facilitating state' is deemed crucial during the process of industrial upgrading when these factor endowments shift and when a country upgrades its industrial structure from one stage to another. Most interestingly, Justin, in a full chapter in 'The Quest for Prosperity: How Developing Economies Can Take Off', lays out a six-step approach where a government could put the new structural economics into practice and adapt its industrial policies based on the country's development stage.

林毅夫认为，一个国家的产业结构是由其内在的比较优势决定的，包括劳动力、自然资源、人力资本和物质资本等要素禀赋。值得一提的是，林毅夫指出，在经济发展的每一个阶段，竞争性市场都应该是最基本的资源配置机制。但是，当一个国家在产业升级过程中，相关的要素禀赋和产业结构正在发生根本性转变时，政府的促进作用也是至关重要的。林毅夫在《繁荣的求索：发展中经济如何崛起》一书中更进一步用一整章的篇幅提出了政府支持产业发展的六步甄别，将新结构经济学付诸实践，详细介绍了政府如何根据特殊发展阶段来调整其产业政策。

Justin also argued recently that because innovation and industrial upgrading form the most important growth drivers for the Chinese economy, investment is needed to continue to drive the economy, seemingly contrary to the current mainstream thinking that the Chinese economy needs to quickly become consumption-driven. In fact, Justin argued that infrastructure investment not only is a key driver for the Chinese economy, it should become a key economic driver globally, in developed and developing countries alike.

最近，林毅夫还提出，由于中国经济的增长点来自创新和产业升级，因此需要继续通过投资来拉动经济。这似乎和目前中国经济需要迅速以消费驱动的主流思想唱了反调。事实上，林毅夫认为基础设施投资不仅是推动中国经济继续增长的关键，也是包括发达国家和发展中国家在内的全球经济复苏和发展的驱动器。

Reflecting on Justin's views on these topics, three thoughts come to my mind.

林毅夫的这些观点使我想到了三个问题。

The first has to do with the role and capacity of state. With the demise of the market fundamentalism, the role of state in economic affairs is being radically reassessed. The capacity of state in many advanced economies is being questioned. The lack of such capacity, both in handling domestic economy and in coordinating economic policy internationally is alarming. In the US, the Fed has essentially run out of its powder after cutting Fed Fund Rates all the way to zero. Printing money, known as QE, seems to be the only thing left in its tool kit and I suspect that the day people realize that the emperor has no cloth is not too far in the future. On the fiscal side, it is hard to envision meaningful stimulus in the US, given the still elevated levels of public and private debt. The picture in most of Europe is even bleaker. In Japan, the government is not only unable to offer coherent economic policy, it cannot even stay in office for more than a few months.

首先是政府的作用和能力。随着市场原教旨主义的终结，人们正在从根本上重新评估政府在经济事务中应起的作用。发达国家政府的执行能力受到质疑，在处理国内经济和协调国际经济政策两方面都显得无所作为。在美国，美联储降息到零之后，除了量化宽松印钞票，似乎没有什么别的办法。我怀疑人们意识到皇帝原来没有穿新衣的这一天已经不远了。在财政政策方面，由于公共和私人债务水平居高难下，美国政府对财政刺激心有余而力不足。大多数欧洲国家的经济前景更为暗淡，政府更加无作为。在日本，政府走马灯似地换，根本无法实施连贯性的经济政策。

As Justin pointed out, even in the advanced economies, governments encourage innovation through four common measures: support basic research, protect patents, mandate the use of new technologies and products, and government procurement. Except patent protection, all other three measures require government decision-making, thus forming an implicit form of industrial policy. Pretending that somehow state should stay far away from industrial upgrading or innovation is futile, and unwise. The strong state capacity in countries like China, Korea and Singapore should be celebrated.

正如林毅夫所指出的，即使是在发达经济体，政府鼓励创新也主要通过四种常见的措施：支持基础研究、专利保护、行政命令规定新技术和新产品的使用比例和政府采购。除专利保护外，其他所有三项措施都需要政府制定政策，从而形成一个隐性的产业政策。在产业升级和创新过程中，政府刻意不干预是徒劳和不明智的。中国、韩国和新加坡等国的“有为政府是一项竞争优势，这些国家不应该“自废武功。

The second thought is on investment vs consumption. As I argued in my column last month, China continues to need investment because China's capital stock per worker is about 40% less than other middle income East Asian countries and is merely 10% of US levels. Moreover, even if we assume an aggressive 10% consumption growth, it could take China 20 years to reach the level of Korea for consumption as a share of GDP, and 35 years to the level of US. So to expect household consumption to replace investment to become a bigger driver of the economy in the near term is unrealistic. China has far from finishing its industrialization process and industrial upgrading process calls for more investment.

第二个问题是投资与消费的关系。在上一篇专栏中我提到，中国经济仍然需要大量投资。和其他中等收入的东亚国家相比, 中国工人的人均资本存量不超过其40％，更仅仅是美国水平的10％。此外，即使我们假设消费每年增长10％，中国仍然需要20年才能赶上韩国消费占GDP的比重，要赶上美国的水平需要35年。因此，期望居民消费在短期内取代投资成为经济的主要驱动器是不现实的。中国在工业化和现代化的路上还有很长的路要走，经济在很长时期内还需要投资来驱动。

Justin's argument that China needs continued investment for industrial upgrading also means that the investment China needs to make now and in the future is different from what the country did in the past. China may want to consider more investments that improve people's quality of life and those that generate long-term sustainable economic and social returns. A good example is the new energy saving and environment protection industries, a new sector which now employs 28 million people and generate a total output of roughly $380 billion. According to NDRC Vice Chairman Xie Zhenhua, China plans over the next five years to invest another $315 billion in this sector, taking the total employment to 40 million and output to over $700 billion by 2015.

当然，这并不意味着中国现在和未来的投资行为需要走过去的老路。恰恰相反，林毅夫关于中国经济由于产业升级而需要更多投资的观点意味着投资的方式需要根据产业升级的特定阶段而有所改变。我认为应该在改善人民生活质量和产生长期可持续的经济和社会回报的领域加大投资。一个很好的例子是新能源和环境保护行业，这个新兴产业现在拥有从业人员2800万人，总产值大约为3800亿美元。据国家发改委副主任解振华透露，中国计划未来五年在这一领域进一步投资3150亿美元，到2015年总从业人员有望达到4000万人，总产值超过7000亿美元。

The third thought that comes to mind is adaptability. Justin's new structural economics argue that economic development is a dynamic and evolving process and that policy makers need to adapt the industrial structures in order to identify, dynamically, the best policy combinations at any given point of time with any given set of factor endowments.

我想到的第三个问题是政府的适应能力。新结构经济学认为，经济发展是一个动态的和不断发展的过程，政策制定者需要根据特定的时期、特定的要素禀赋来动态地决定产业政策取向，政策组合需要有适应能力。

Justin's new structural economics paint a bright future for the Chinese style economic policy-making that combines a strong government, adaptable thinking and willingness to experiment. However, a necessary ingredient for this formula to work is a government that is well-intentioned, competent and not corrupt. Wide spread corruptions have created a deep trust deficit in the Chinese society today. Such trust deficit at worst could turn localized failures into national shocks, and imposes a heavy transaction cost that is slowing down Chinese people's persistent pursuit of a better life.

中国式的经济决策方式结合了政府的强大执行能力、适应能力和摸着石头过河的务实态度，林毅夫的新结构经济学给这种经济决策方式提供了一个理论框架，描绘了一个美好前景。然而，这种决策方式行得通的基本前提是政府要有善意、有能力，并且不腐败。今天的中国社会腐败蔓延，面临着严重的“信任赤字。这种信任赤字在最坏的情况可能导致地方问题发展成全国性的冲击，最起码也会给经济社会带来沉重的交易成本，是中国人民追求美好生活的拦路虎。

Kevin Lu is Director of the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), the private sector investment guarantee arm of the World Bank Group. He is a member of the Geneva-based World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on China, as well as a member of the Emerging Markets Advisory Council at the Institute of International Finance based in Washington, DC. This column focuses on policy issues related to international finance and political economy, especially those relevant to the emerging economies. It also examines many fundamental changes that are occurring in the advanced economies, in the context of the significant shifts of economic weight towards emerging markets. The opinions are his own.

（作者凯闻是世界银行集团多边投资担保机构（MIGA） 亚太局局长，华盛顿国际金融研究所（IIF）新兴市场顾问委员会委员。本专栏旨在关注与新兴市场和中国最为相关的国际财经政策问题, 并在新兴市场日益强大的背景下对西方政治经济体系发生的结构性变化发表评论。文中所述仅代表他的个人观点。）