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A real-time revolution will up-end the practice of macroeconomics

DOES ANYONE really understand what is going on in the world economy? The pandemic has made plenty of observers look clueless. Few predicted $80 oil, let alone fleets of container ships waiting outside Californian and Chinese ports. As covid-19 let rip in 2020, forecasters overestimated how high unemployment would be by the end of the year. Today prices are rising faster than expected and nobody is sure if inflation and wages will spiral upward. For all their equations and theories, economists are often fumbling in the dark, with too little information to pick the policies that would maximise jobs and growth.

有人真正了解世界经济正在发生什么吗? 这场大流行病让许多观察人士看起来毫无头绪。很少有人预测油价会达到80美元，更不用说在加州和中国港口外等待的集装箱船队了。随着2019冠状病毒病在2020年肆虐，预测者高估了今年年底的失业率。如今，物价上涨速度快于预期，没有人能确定通胀和工资是否会螺旋上升。尽管经济学家们有各种公式和理论，但他们往往在黑暗中摸索，缺乏足够的信息来选择能够最大化就业和增长的政策。

✓ clueless 一无所知的

✓ to be clueless (about sth)（对某事物）一窍不通

✓ to let rip (behave without restraint)为所欲为

✓ happen in uncontrolled way不受控制地发展

✓ (speak vehemently) 激动地说

Yet, as we report this week, the age of bewilderment is starting to give way to greater enlightenment. The world is on the brink of a real-time revolution in economics, as the quality and timeliness of information are transformed. Big firms from Amazon to Netflix already use instant data to monitor grocery deliveries and how many people are glued to “Squid Game”. The pandemic has led governments and central banks to experiment, from monitoring restaurant bookings to tracking card payments. The results are still rudimentary, but as digital devices, sensors and fast payments become ubiquitous, the ability to observe the economy accurately and speedily will improve. That holds open the promise of better public-sector decision-making—as well as the temptation for governments to meddle.

然而，正如我们本周报道的那样，困惑的时代正开始让位于更大的启蒙。随着信息的质量和时效性发生变化，世界正处于一场即时经济革命的边缘。从亚马逊到网飞等大公司已经在使用即时数据来监控食品杂货配送情况，以及有多少人喜欢“鱿鱼游戏”。疫情促使各国政府和央行尝试，从监控餐馆预订到跟踪信用卡支付。结果尚为基础，但随着数字设备、传感器和快速支付变得无处不在，准确、快速观察经济的能力将会提高。这使得更好的公共部门决策成为可能，同时也诱使政府插手。

✓ on the brink of disaster/success 濒于灾难/几近成功

The desire for better economic data is hardly new. America’s GNP estimates date to 1934 and initially came with a 13-month time lag. In the 1950s a young Alan Greenspan monitored freight-car traffic to arrive at early estimates of steel production. Ever since Walmart pioneered supply-chain management in the 1980s private-sector bosses have seen timely data as a source of competitive advantage. But the public sector has been slow to reform how it works. The official figures that economists track—think of GDP or employment—come with lags of weeks or months and are often revised dramatically. Productivity takes years to calculate accurately. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that central banks are flying blind.

对更好的经济数据的渴望并不是什么新鲜事。美国的国民生产总值的估计始于1934年，最初有13个月的时间差。20世纪50年代，年轻的Alan Greenspan通过监测货运汽车的流量，对钢铁产量做出了初步估计。自从沃尔玛在上世纪80年代率先推行供应链管理以来，私营部门的老板们就把及时的数据视为竞争优势的一个来源。但公共部门在改革其运作方式方面进展缓慢。经济学家追踪的官方数据（比如GDP或就业）落后了几周或几个月，而且经常被大幅修正。准确计算生产率需要数年时间。如果说央行在盲目行事，这只是略有夸张。

✓ lag 时间间隔；延搁

✓ pioneer 开创；开辟

✓ timely 及时的；适时的

✓ be flying blind 没有任何经验或信息就开始做一件事，盲目行事

Bad and late data can lead to policy errors that cost millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in lost output. The financial crisis would have been a lot less harmful had the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to near zero in December 2007, when America entered recession, rather than in December 2008, when economists at last saw it in the numbers. Patchy data about a vast informal economy and rotten banks have made it harder for India’s policymakers to end their country’s lost decade of low growth. The European Central Bank wrongly raised interest rates in 2011 amid a temporary burst of inflation, sending the euro area back into recession. The Bank of England may be about to make a similar mistake today.

糟糕和滞后的数据可能会导致政策失误，导致数百万人失业和数万亿美元的产出损失。如果美联储在2007年12月美国陷入衰退期时将利率降至接近零的水平，而不是在2008年12月经济学家终于从数据中看到了这一点，金融危机的危害会小得多。有关庞大的非正规经济和腐败的银行的参差不齐的数据使得印度的政策制定者更难结束他们国家失去的十年的低增长。2011年，欧洲央行在短暂的通胀爆发期间错误地提高了利率，导致欧元区再次陷入衰退。英国央行今天可能会犯类似的错误。

✓ patchy 分布不匀的；参差不齐的

The pandemic has, however, become a catalyst for change. Without the time to wait for official surveys to reveal the effects of the virus or lockdowns, governments and central banks have experimented, tracking mobile phones, contactless payments and the real-time use of aircraft engines. Instead of locking themselves in their studies for years writing the next “General Theory”, today’s star economists, such as Raj Chetty at Harvard University, run well-staffed labs that crunch numbers. Firms such as JPMorgan Chase have opened up treasure chests of data on bank balances and credit-card bills, helping reveal whether people are spending cash or hoarding it.

然而，这场大流行病已成为变革的催化剂。由于没有时间等待官方调查揭示病毒或封锁的影响，各国政府和央行已经进行了尝试，跟踪手机、无接触支付和飞机引擎的即时使用。今天的明星经济学家，如哈佛大学的Raj Chetty，并没有把自己锁在多年研究中，写出下一个“通论”，而是管理着人员充足的实验室来处理数据。摩根大通等公司已经打开了银行余额和信用卡账单数据的宝库，帮助揭示人们是在消费现金还是在储存现金。

These trends will intensify as technology permeates the economy. A larger share of spending is shifting online and transactions are being processed faster. Real-time payments grew by 41% in 2020, according to McKinsey, a consultancy (India registered 25.6bn such transactions). More machines and objects are being fitted with sensors, including individual shipping containers that could make sense of supply-chain blockages. Govcoins, or central-bank digital currencies (CBDCs), which China is already piloting and over 50 other countries are considering, might soon provide a goldmine of real-time detail about how the economy works.

随着科技渗透到经济中，这些趋势将会加剧。越来越多的消费转移到网上，交易的处理速度也在加快。根据咨询公司麦肯锡的数据，即时支付在2020年增长了41%(印度登记了256亿笔此类交易)。越来越多的机器和物体都安装了传感器，包括能够感知供应链堵塞的单个海运集装箱。中国已经在试行央行数字货币(Govcoins)，其他50多个国家也在考虑使用这种货币。它可能很快就会提供一个关于经济运行情况的即时细节的宝库。

✓ goldmine 宝库

Timely data would cut the risk of policy cock-ups—it would be easier to judge, say, if a dip in activity was becoming a slump. And the levers governments can pull will improve, too. Central bankers reckon it takes 18 months or more for a change in interest rates to take full effect. But Hong Kong is trying out cash handouts in digital wallets that expire if they are not spent quickly. CBDCs might allow interest rates to fall deeply negative. Good data during crises could let support be precisely targeted; imagine loans only for firms with robust balance-sheets but a temporary liquidity problem. Instead of wasteful universal welfare payments made through social-security bureaucracies, the poor could enjoy instant income top-ups if they lost their job, paid into digital wallets without any paperwork.

及时的数据可以降低政策失误的风险，比如说，如果经济活动的下降正在演变为经济衰退，那么判断起来会更容易一些。政府可以利用的杠杆也将得到改善。中央银行认为，利率的变化需要18个月甚至更长时间才能完全生效。但香港正在尝试在数字钱包中发放现金，如果不迅速消费，这些现金就会过期。央行数字货币可能会允许利率大幅降至负值。危机期间的良好数据可以让资助有明确的目标; 想象一下，贷款只贷给那些资产负债表稳健但存在暂时流动性问题的公司。与通过社会保障机构进行的浪费的普遍福利支付不同，穷人在失业时可以享受即时的收入补充，无需任何书面文件就可以支付到数字钱包中。

✓ cock-up 一团糟

The real-time revolution promises to make economic decisions more accurate, transparent and rules-based. But it also brings dangers. New indicators may be misinterpreted: is a global recession starting or is Uber just losing market share? They are not as representative or free from bias as the painstaking surveys by statistical agencies. Big firms could hoard data, giving them an undue advantage. Private firms such as Facebook, which launched a digital wallet this week, may one day have more insight into consumer spending than the Fed does.

即时革命有望使经济决策更加准确、透明且基于规则。但它也带来了危险。新的指标可能会被误解:是全球衰退开始了，还是优步刚刚失去了市场份额? 它们不像统计机构辛苦进行的调查那样具有代表性，也不具有偏见。大公司可以囤积数据，这给了他们过度的优势。像本周推出数字钱包的Facebook这样的私人公司，也许有一天会比美联储更了解消费者支出。

Know thyself

了解你自己

The biggest danger is hubris. With a panopticon of the economy, it will be tempting for politicians and officials to imagine they can see far into the future, or to mould society according to their preferences and favour particular groups. This is the dream of theXXX, which seeks to engage in a form of digital central planning.

最大的危险是狂妄自大。有了经济的全景图，政治家和官员们很容易想象他们可以看到遥远的未来，或者根据自己的喜好塑造社会，并偏袒特定群体。这是XXX的梦想，它寻求参与一种数字中央计划的形式。

✓ hubris 傲慢自大

In fact no amount of data can reliably predict the future. Unfathomably complex, dynamic economies rely not on Big Brother but on the spontaneous behaviour of millions of independent firms and consumers. Instant economics isn’t about clairvoyance or omniscience. Instead its promise is prosaic but transformative: better, timelier and more rational decision-making. 

事实上，再多的数据也无法可靠地预测未来。深不可测的复杂而充满活力的经济不是依靠独裁政府，而是依靠数以百万计的独立公司和消费者的自发行为。即时经济学不是围绕着洞察力或无所不知。相反，它的承诺平淡无奇，却具有变革意义: 做出更好、更及时、更理性的决策。

✓ Unfathomably [释义] in a way that is impossible to understand

✓ Big Brother 老大哥 [指独裁者或独裁政府]

✓ clairvoyance 洞察力

✓ omniscience 全知

✓ prosaic 平庸的；平淡的

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