新兴市场是否忘了结构性改革

You often hear economists and investors talk thesedays about the ‘broken growth model’ in emergingmarkets. It isn’t a terribly precise term but it’s easy to see what people mean. The problem inEM is that none of the three possible sources of GDP growth – exports, or public domesticspending, or private domestic spending – have much going for them.

如今你经常听到经济学家和投资者谈论新兴市场“增长模式破产。这不是一个特别准确的术语，但我们不难看出人们所指的意思。新兴市场的问题在于，国内生产总值(GDP)的三个可能增长源头——出口、公共国内支出和私人国内消费——没有一个是强劲的。

Exports from EM are hobbled by a collapse in the growth of global trade and the related fall inworld commodity prices. Public spending growth is weak because many governments are toonervous to loosen fiscal policy, fearing a loss of sovereign creditworthiness at a time when theoutlook for capital inflows isn’t encouraging. And private domestic spending is hampered bythe fact that credit markets in many countries are in ‘post-boom’ mode: neither domesticlenders nor borrowers have much in the way of risk appetite.

全球贸易增速剧减以及相关的世界大宗商品价格下跌，重创了新兴市场的出口。公共支出增长很弱，原因在于许多政府过于紧张、不敢放松财政政策，担心在资本流入前景不妙之际丧失主权信誉。私人国内消费受到了许多国家的信贷市场处于‘后繁荣’状态的抑制：国内的贷款机构和借款者两方面都没有多少风险偏好。

All this helps to explain why emerging markets GDP growth, on average, should fall below 4per cent this year for the first time since 2001.

这一切有助于解释，为何今年的新兴市场平均GDP增速应该会自2001年以来首次降到4%以下。

Faced with this state of affairs, you might think countries would be falling over themselves toreform their economies: reducing barriers to economic activity, de-clogging product markets,reducing regulation, making additional effort to seek new inflows of foreign direct investment.Yet most economists and investors with any knowledge of emerging markets would only beable to name two countries which have a definable reform strategy that is being more or lessimplemented: India and Mexico.

面对这种局面，你或许会以为，新兴市场国家将竞相推行经济改革：降低经济活动门槛，疏通产品市场，减少监管，加倍努力寻求新的外国直接投资(FDI)。不过，大多数了解新兴市场的经济学家和投资者只能列出两个国家具有比较明确的改革战略、而且或多或少在执行战略：印度和墨西哥。

Why are so few countries embracing reform? To see why, you need to think back to the early2000s, when emerging economies were just, well, emerging from two decades ofintermittent financial crises. Looking back on the grim experiences of the 1980s and 1990s –crises in Latin America, Asia, Russia, Turkey and others – the biggest question at the start ofthe 2000s was ‘what on earth is it that’s making developing countries so susceptible to crisis?’And the answer seemed clear. The problem in emerging markets was overwhelminglydescribed as a problem to do with weak sovereign balance sheets: too much public debt, toomuch of it denominated in foreign currencies, and too much of it needing to be repaid too soon.

为何拥抱改革的国家如此之少?若要知道原因，你需要回想一下本世纪初的情况，那时新兴经济体刚刚走出持续20年断断续续的金融危机。回忆一下上世纪80和90年代的可怕经历吧——拉美、亚洲、俄罗斯和土耳其等地的危机——本世纪初的最大问题是，“究竟是什么因素导致发展中国家这么容易爆发危机?答案似乎显而易见。新兴市场的问题被多数人描述为与主权资产负债表薄弱有关：公共债务太高，其中以外币计价的债务比例太高，需要很快偿付的比例也太高。

Structural reform was certainly part of the debate, but not too central to it.

那时，结构改革当然是辩论的议题之一，但并非核心议题。

This analysis spurred action: policymakers in developing countries made strenuous efforts tostrengthen their public sector balance sheets during the 2000s: reducing debt/GDP ratios,cutting the amount owed in dollars, accumulating foreign reserves and extending the maturityprofile of government bonds. Indeed, the 2000s saw a dramatic improvement in the health ofsovereign balance sheets: the average debt/GDP ratio in EM fell from over 60 per cent in theearly 2000s to just over 40 per cent nowadays.

有关主权资产负债表薄弱的分析结果引发了行动：在本世纪头10年，发展中国家的政策制定者在强化公共部门的资产负债表方面下了很大功夫：降低债务/GDP比率，减少美元债务数量，积累外汇储备，从总体上延长政府债券的年期。的确，在本世纪头10年里，主权资产负债表的健康状况大为好转：新兴市场的平均债务/GDP比率从21世纪初的60%以上，降低到如今的略高于40%。

That felt like enough, since the 2000s wrapped these countries in the warm embrace of rapidChinese growth, plenty of external financing, and unusually strong import growth in thedeveloped world. So, structural reform was crowded out by an intellectual emphasis on thecentral importance of balance sheets, aided by an exceptionally friendly world economy thatmade EM policymakers feel that whatever it was they were doing, it was working.

这给人的感觉是足够了，因为在本世纪头10年里，这些国家极大地受益于中国快速增长、充足外部资金和异常强劲的发达世界进口增长。结构性改革被排挤掉了，因为学术界强调资产负债表的核心重要性，而极其有利的世界经济促使新兴市场的政策制定者觉得，无论他们在做什么，他们的行动都很灵验。

Now that the global economic temperature is much colder, what we’re learning is that having astrong sovereign balance sheet is at best a necessary – but not a sufficient – condition forenjoying stable growth. A business climate that supports animal spirits is needed too, more sotoday than any time in the recent past.

现在既然全球经济温度低了很多，我们学到的教益是，拥有强大的主权资产负债表充其量是享有稳定增长的必要条件，而不是充分条件。还需要一种支持“动物精神的商业氛围，与近年任何时候相比，如今更是如此。

But it takes time for countries to reach that conclusion. Look at Mexico, for example. Onereason that Mexicans ended up electing a President in 2012 who was committed to properstructural reform – in energy, telecoms, education and labour above all – was that its economicperformance had been dismal for over 30 years.

但各国需要一定的时间才能得出这个结论。以墨西哥为例。2012年，墨西哥人选出了一位承诺认真推行结构性改革(最重要的是能源、电信、教育以及劳动力市场改革)的总统，原因之一在于，该国的经济表现令人沮丧已有30余年了。

The 1980s were ‘lost’ as a result of a debt crisis; the 1990s were overshadowed by China’s1993 devaluation and the subsequent Tequila crisis in late 1994; and in the 2000s Mexico wasone of the few countries in the developing world that failed to benefit from China’s rise, sinceChina’s membership of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001 allowed its exporters tocapture market share from, above all, Mexico. Between 1980 and 2010, emerging economiesas a whole enjoyed GDP growth of 4.5 per cent on average. Mexico rubbed along with just 2.6per cent. And it was this persistently weak economic performance which gave the countryplenty of time to come up with a diagnosis, and elect a President aiming to do something aboutit (not that his effort has been an unqualified success).

一场债务危机使墨西哥“失去了上世纪80年代;90年代，墨西哥受到1993年中国人民币贬值和1994年末特基拉危机的影响;本世纪头10年，墨西哥是未能受益于中国崛起的少数发展中国家之一，因为2001年中国加入世贸组织(WTO)使得中国出口商从其他国家那里夺取了市场份额，首当其冲的便是墨西哥。1980年至2010年间，新兴经济体整体的平均GDP增速达到4.5%。墨西哥则只有2.6%。正是这种持续疲弱的经济表现，让墨西哥举国上下有很多时间得出诊断结果，最终选举出一位有意采取相应行动的总统(当然他的努力也并未取得绝对成功)。

Let’s hope that it doesn’t take too many countries a generation to discover the need forstructural reforms, or the ‘growth model’ may stay broken for a depressingly long time.

我们希望，不要有太多的国家需要一代人的时间才能发现结构性改革的必要性，否则的话，当前“增长模式或许会失灵很久。

But here’s a dilemma. One of the gravest structural deficiencies in EM is poor infrastructure.Yet improving this will almost certainly require funding from the public sector. So countries mayfind themselves with a difficult choice: is it better to maintain as strong a public balance sheet aspossible in order to keep your country’s borrowing costs low? Or is it worth tolerating higherpublic debt levels in order to finance infrastructure? The outlook for EM growth would be a lotmore rosy if there was an easy answer to that question.

但这里有个两难。新兴市场的最严重结构性缺陷之一是基础设施薄弱。但是，改善基础设施将几乎肯定需要公共部门资金。所以，这些国家或许会发现自己面临一个棘手选择：维持尽可能强大的公共部门资产负债表、以便把国家的借款成本保持在低水平?还是忍受更高的公共债务水平、以便为完善基础设施提供资金支持?如果这个问题有轻松的答案，新兴市场增长的前景就将美好得多。