经济学人
2021年《经济学人》杂志原版英文(整理完整版)

Digest Of The. Economist. 2006(6-7)欧阳光明(2021.03.07)Hard to digestA wealth of genetic information is to be found in the human gutBACTERIA, like people, can be divided into friend and foe. Inspired by evidence that the friendly sort may help with a range of ailments, many people consume bacteria in the form of yogurts and dietary supplements. Such a smattering of artificial additions, however, represents but a drop in the ocean. There are at least 800 types of bacteria living in the human gut. And research by Steven Gill of the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland, and his colleagues, published in this week's Science, suggests that the collective genome of these organisms is so large that it contains 100 times as many genes as the human genome itself.Dr Gill and his team were able to come to this conclusion by extracting bacterial DNA from the faeces of two volunteers. Because of the complexity of the samples, they were not able to reconstruct the entire genomes of each of the gut bacteria, just the individual genes. But that allowed them to make an estimate of numbers.What all these bacteria are doing is tricky to identify—the bacteria themselves are difficult to cultivate. So the researchers guessed at what they might be up to by comparing the genes they discovered withpublished databases of genes whose functions are already known.This comparison helped Dr Gill identify for the first time the probable enzymatic processes by which bacteria help humans to digest the complex carbohydrates in plants. The bacteria also contain a plentiful supply of genes involved in the synthesis of chemicals essential to human life—including two B vitamins and certain essential amino acids—although the team merely showed that these metabolic pathways exist rather than proving that they are used. Nevertheless, the pathways they found leave humans looking more like ruminants: animals such as goats and sheep that use bacteria to break down otherwise indigestible matter in the plants they eat.The broader conclusion Dr Gill draws is that people are superorganisms whose metabolism represents an amalgamation of human and microbial attributes. The notion of a superorganism has emerged before, as researchers in other fields have come to view humans as having a diverse internal ecosystem. This, suggest some, will be crucial to the success of personalised medicine, as different people will have different responses to drugs, depending on their microbial flora. Accordingly, the next step, says Dr Gill, is to see how microbial populations vary between people of different ages, backgrounds and diets.Another area of research is the process by which these helpful bacteria first colonise the digestive tract. Babies acquire their gut flora asthey pass down the birth canal and take a gene-filled gulp of their mother's vaginal and faecal flora. It might not be the most delicious of first meals, but it could well be an important one.Zapping the bluesThe rebirth of electric-shock treatmentELECTRICITY has long been used to treat medical disorders. As early as the second century AD, Galen, a Greek physician, recommended the use of electric eels for treating headaches and facial pain. In the 1930s Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, two Italian psychiatrists, used electroconvulsive therapy to treat schizophrenia. These days, such rigorous techniques are practised less widely. But researchers are still investigating how a gentler electric therapy appears to treat depression.Vagus-nerve stimulation, to give it its proper name, was originally developed to treat severe epilepsy. It requires a pacemaker-like device to be implanted in a patient's chest and wires from it threaded up to the vagus nerve on the left side of his neck. In the normal course of events, this provides an electrical pulse to the vagus nerve for 30 seconds every five minutes.This treatment does not always work, but in some cases where it failed (the number of epileptic seizures experienced by a patient remaining the same), that patient nevertheless reported feeling much better after receiving the implant. This secondary effect led to trials for treating depression and, in 2005, America's Food and DrugAdministration approved the therapy for depression that fails to respond to all conventional treatments, including drugs and psychotherapy.Not only does the treatment work, but its effects appear to be long lasting. A study led by Charles Conway of Saint Louis University in Missouri, and presented to a recent meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, has found that 70% of patients who are better after one year stay better after two years as well.The technique builds on a procedure called deep-brain stimulation, in which electrodes are implanted deep into the white matter of patients' brains and used to “reboot” f aulty neural circuitry. Such an operation is a big undertaking, requiring a full day of surgery and carrying a risk of the patient suffering a stroke. Only a small number of people have been treated this way. In contrast, the device that stimulates the vagus nerve can be implanted in 45 minutes without a stay in hospital.The trouble is that vagus-nerve stimulation can take a long time to produce its full beneficial effect. According to Dr Conway, scans taken using a technique called positron-emission tomography show significant changes in brain activity starting three months after treatment begins. The changes are similar to the improvements seen in patients who undergo other forms of antidepression treatment. The brain continues to change over the following 21 months. Dr Conway says that patients should be told that the antidepressant effects could be slow in coming.However, Richard Selway of King's College Hospital, London,found that his patients' moods improved just weeks after the implant. Although brain scans are useful in determining the longevity of the treatment, Mr Selway notes that visible changes in the brain do not necessarily correlate perfectly with changes in mood.Nobody knows why stimulating the vagus nerve improves the mood of depressed patients, but Mr Selway has a theory. He believes that the electrical stimulation causes a region in the brain stem called the locus caeruleus (Latin, ironically, for “blue place”) to flood the brain with norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter implicated in alertness, concentration and motivation—that is, the mood states missing in depressed patients. Whatever the mechanism, for the depressed a therapy that is relatively safe and long lasting is rare cause for cheer.The shape of things to comeHow tomorrow's nuclear power stations will differ from today's THE agency in charge of promoting nuclear power in America describes a new generation of reactors that will be “highly economical” with “enhanced safety”, that “minimise wastes” and will prove “proliferation resistant”. No doubt they will bake a mean apple pie, too.Unfortunately, in the world of nuclear energy, fine words are not enough. America got away lightly with its nuclear accident. When the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania overheated in 1979 very little radiation leaked, and there were no injuries. Europe was not so lucky. The accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986 killed dozens immediatelyand has affected (sometimes fatally) the health of tens of thousands at the least. Even discounting the association of nuclear power with nuclear weaponry, people have good reason to be suspicious of claims that reactors are safe.Yet political interest in nuclear power is reviving across the world, thanks in part to concerns about global warming and energy security. Already, some 441 commercial reactors operate in 31 countries and provide 17% of the planet's electricity, according to America's Department of Energy. Until recently, the talk was of how to retire these reactors gracefully. Now it is of how to extend their lives. In addition, another 32 reactors are being built, mostly in India, China and their neighbours. These new power stations belong to what has been called the third generation of reactors, designs that have been informed by experience and that are considered by their creators to be advanced. But will these new stations really be safer than their predecessors?Clearly, modern designs need to be less accident prone. The most important feature of a safe design is that it “fails safe”. For a re actor, this means that if its control systems stop working it shuts down automatically, safely dissipates the heat produced by the reactions in its core, and stops both the fuel and the radioactive waste produced by nuclear reactions from escaping by keeping them within some sort of containment vessel. Reactors that follow such rules are called “passive”. Most modern designs are passive to some extent and some newer onesare truly so. However, some of the genuinely passive reactors are also likely to be more expensive to run.Nuclear energy is produced by atomic fission. A large atom (usually uranium or plutonium) breaks into two smaller ones, releasing energy and neutrons. The neutrons then trigger further break-ups. And so on. If this “chain reaction” can be controlled, the energy released can be used to boil water, produce steam and drive a turbine that generates electricity. If it runs away, the result is a meltdown and an accident (or, in extreme circumstances, a nuclear explosion—though circumstances are never that extreme in a reactor because the fuel is less fissile than the material in a bomb). In many new designs the neutrons, and thus the chain reaction, are kept under control by passing them through water to slow them down. (Slow neutrons trigger more break ups than fast ones.) This water is exposed to a pressure of about 150 atmospheres—a pressure that means it remains liquid even at high temperatures. When nuclear reactions warm the water, its density drops, and the neutrons passing through it are no longer slowed enough to trigger further reactions. That negative feedback stabilises the reaction rate.Can business be cool?Why a growing number of firms are taking global warming seriously RUPERT MURDOCH is no green activist. But in Pebble Beach later this summer, the annual gathering of executivesof Mr Murdoch's News Corporation—which last year led to a dramatic shift in the mediaconglomerate's attitude tothe internet—will be addressed by several leading environmentalists, including a vice-president turned climatechangemovie star. Last month BSkyB, a British satellite-television company chaired by Mr Murdoch and run by hisson, James, declared itself “carbon-neutral”, having taken various steps to cut or offset its discharges of carboninto the atmosphere.The army of corporate greens is growing fast. Late last year HSBC became the first big bank to announce that itwas carbon-neutral, joining other financial institutions, including Swiss Re, a reinsurer, and Goldman Sachs, aninvestment bank, in waging war on climate-warming gases (of which carbon dioxide is the main culprit). Last yearGeneral Electric (GE), an industrial powerhouse, launched its “Ecomagination” strategy, aiming to cut its output ofgreenhouse gases and to invest heavily in clean (ie, carbon-free) technologies. In October Wal-Mart announced aseries of environmental schemes, including doubling the fuel-efficiency of its fleet of vehicles within a decade.Tesco and Sainsbury, two of Britain's biggest retailers, are competing fiercely to be the greenest. And on June 7thsome leading British bosses lobbied Tony Blair for a more ambitious policy on climate change, even if that involvesharsher regulation.The greening of business is by no means universal, however. Money from Exxon Mobil, Ford and General Motorshelped pay for television advertisements aired recently in America by the CompetitiveEnterprise Institute, with thedaft slogan “Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution; we call it life”. Besides, environmentalist critics say, some firmsare eng aged in superficial “greenwash” to boost the image of essentially climate-hurting businesses. Take BP, themost prominent corporate advocate of action on climate change, with its “Beyond Petroleum” ad campaign, highprofileinvestments in green energy, andev en a “carbon calculator” on its website that helps consumers measuretheir personal “carbon footprint”, or overall emissions of carbon. Yet, critics complain, BP's recent record profits arelargely thanks to sales of huge amounts of carbon-packed oil and gas.On the other hand, some free-market thinkers see the support of firms for regulation of carbon as the latestattempt at “regulatory capture”, by those who stand to profit from new rules. Max Schulz of the ManhattanInstitute, a conservative think tank, not es darkly that “Enron was into pushing the idea of climate change, becauseit was good for its business”.Others argue that climate change has no more place in corporate boardrooms than do discussions of other partisanpolitical issues, such as Darfur or gay marriage. That criticism, at least, is surely wrong. Most of the corporateconverts say they are acting not out of some vague sense of social responsibility, or even personal angst, butbecause climate change creates real business risks and opportunities—from regulatory compliance to insuringclients on flood plains. And although theseconcerns vary hugely from one company to the next, few firms can besure of remaining unaffected.Testing timesResearchers are working on ways to reduce the need for animal experiments, but new laws mayincrease the number of experiments neededIN AN ideal world, people would not perform experiments on animals. For the people, they are expensive. For theanimals, they are stressful and often painful.That ideal world, sadly, is still some way away. People need new drugs and vaccines. They want protection fromthe toxicity of chemicals. The search for basic scientific answers goes on. Indeed, the European Commission isforging ahead with proposals that will increase the number of animal experiments carried out in the EuropeanUnion, by requiring toxicity tests on every chemical approved for use within the union's borders in the past 25years.Already, the commission has identified 140,000 chemicals that have not yet been tested. It wants 30,000 of theseto be examined right away, and plans to spend between €4 billion-8 billion ($5 billion-10 billion) doing so. Thenumber of animals used for toxicity testing in Europe will thus, experts reckon, quintuple from just over 1m a yearto about 5m, unless they are saved by some dramatic advances in non-animal testing technology. At the moment,roughly 10% of European animal tests are forgeneral toxicity, 35% for basic research, 45% for drugs andvaccines, and the remaining 10% a variety of uses such as diagnosing diseases.Animal experimentation will therefore be around for some time yet. But the hunt for substitutes continues, and lastweekend the Middle European Society for Alternative Methods to Animal Testing met in Linz, Austria, to reviewprogress.A good place to start finding alternatives for toxicity tests is the liver—the organ responsible for breaking toxicchemicals down into safer molecules that can then be excreted. Two firms, one large and one small, told themeeting how they were using human liver cells removed incidentally during surgery to test various substances forlong-term toxic effects.PrimeCyte, the small firm, grows its cells in cultures over a few weeks and doses them regularly with the substanceunder investigation. The characteristics of the cells are carefully monitored, to look for changes in theirmicroanatomy.Pfizer, the big firm, also doses its cultures regularly, but rather than studying individual cells in detail, it counts cellnumbers. If the number of cells in a culture changes after a sample is added, that suggests the chemical inquestion is bad for the liver.In principle, these techniques could be applied to any chemical. In practice, drugs (and, in the case of PrimeCyte,food supplements) are top of the list. But that might change if the commission has its way: those 140,000screenings look like a lucrative market, although nobody knowswhether the new tests will be ready for use by2009, when the commission proposes that testing should start.Other tissues, too, can be tested independently of animals. Epithelix, a small firm in Geneva, has developed anartificial version of the liningof the lungs. According to Huang Song, one of Epithelix's researchers, the firm'scultured cells have similar microanatomy to those found in natural lung linings, and respond in the same way tovarious chemical messengers. Dr Huang says that they could be used in long-term toxicity tests of airbornechemicals and could also help identify treatments for lung diseases.The immune system can be mimicked and tested, too. ProBioGen, a company based in Berlin, is developing anartificial human lymph node which, it reckons, could have prevented the near-disastrous consequences of a drugtrial held in Britain three months ago, in which (despite the drug having passed animal tests) six men sufferedmultiple organ failure and nearly died. The drug the men were given made their immune systems hyperactive.Such a response would, the firm's scientists reckon, have been identified by their lymph node, which is made fromcells that provoke the immune system into a response. ProBioGen's lymph node could thus work better than animaltesting.Another way of cutting the number of animal experiments would be tochange the way that vaccines are tested, according to CoenraadHendriksen of the Netherlands Vaccine Institute. At themoment, allbatches of vaccine are subject to the same battery of tests. DrHendriksen argues that this is over-rigorous. When new vaccine culturesare made, belt-and-braces tests obviously need to be applied. But if abatch of vaccine is derived from an existing culture, he suggests that itneed be tested only to make sure it is identical to the batch from which itis derived. That would require fewer test animals.All this suggests that though there is still some way to go before drugs,vaccines and other substances can be tested routinely on cells ratherthan live animals, useful progress is being made. What is harder to see ishow the use of animals might be banished from fundamental research.Anger managementTo one emotion, men are more sensitive than womenMEN are notoriously insensitive to the emotional world around them. At least, that is the stereotype peddled by athousand women's magazines. And a study by two researchers at the University of Melbourne, in Australia,confirms that men are, indeed, less sensitive to emotion than women, with one important and suggestiveexception. Men are acutely sensitive to the anger of other men.Mark Williams and Jason Mattingley, whose study has just been published in Current Biology, looked at the way aperson's sex affects his or her response to emotionally charged facial expressions. People from all cultures agreeon what six basic expressions of emotion look like. Whether the face before you is expressing anger, disgust, fear,joy,sadness or surprise seems to be recognised universally—which suggests that the expressions involved areinnate, rather than learned.Dr Williams and Dr Mattingley showed the participants in their study photographs of these emotional expressions inmixed sets of either four or eight. They asked the participants to look for a particular sort of expression, andmeasured the amount of time it took them to find it. The researchers found, in agreement with previous studies,that both men and women identified angry expressions most quickly. But they also found that anger was morequickly identified on a male face than a female one.Moreover, most participants could find an angry face just as quickly when it was mixed in a group of eightphotographs as when it was part of a group of four. That was in stark contrast to the other five sorts of expression,which took more time to find when they had to be sorted from a larger group. This suggests that something in thebrain is attuned to picking out angry expressions, and that it is especially concerned about angry men. Also, thishighly tuned ability seems more important to males than females, since the two researchers found that men pickedout the angry expressions faster than women did, even though women were usually quicker than men to recognizeevery other sort of facial expression.Dr Williams and Dr Mattingley suspect the reason for this is that being able to spot an angry individual quickly hasa survival advantage—and, since anger is more likely to turn into lethal violence in men than inwomen, the abilityto spot angry males quickly is particularly valuable.As to why men are more sensitive to anger than women, it is presumably because they are far more likely to getkilled by it. Most murders involve men killing other men—even today the context of homicide is usually aspontaneous dispute over status or sex.The ability to spot quickly that an alpha male is in a foul mood would thus have great survival value. It would allowthe sharp-witted time to choose appeasement, defence or possibly even pre-emptive attack. And, if it is right, thisstudy also confirms a lesson learned by generations of bar-room tough guys and schoolyard bullies: if you wantattention, get angry.The shareholders' revoltA turning point in relations between company owners and bosses?SOMETHING strange has been happening this year at company annual meetings in America:shareholders have been voting decisively against the recommendations of managers. Until now, mostshareholders have, like so many sheep, routinely voted in accordance with the advice of the people theyemploy to run the company. This year managers have already been defeated at some 32 companies,including household names such as Boeing, ExxonMobil and General Motors.This shareholders' revolt has focused entirely on one issue: the method by which members of the boardof directors are elected. Shareholder resolutions on other subjects have mostly been defeated, asusual.The successful resolutions called for directors to be elected by majority voting, instead of by thetraditional method of “plurality”—which in practice meant that only votes cast in favour were counted,and that a single vote for a candidate would be enough to get him elected.Several companies, led by Pfizer, a drug giant, saw defeat looming and pre-emptively adopted a formalmajority-voting policy that was weaker than in the shareholder resolution. This required any director whofailed to secure a majority of votes to tender his resignation to the board, which would then be free todecide whether or not to accept it. Under the shareholder resolution, any candidate failing to secure amajority of the votes cast simply would not be elected. Intriguingly, the shareholder resolution wasdefeated at four-fifths of the firms that adopted a Pfizer-style majority voting rule, whereas it succeedednearly nine times out of ten at firms retaining the plurality rule.Unfortunately for shareholders, their victories may prove illusory, as the successful resolutions were all“precatory”—meaning that they merely advised management on the course of action preferred byshareholders, but did not force managers to do anything. Several resolutions that tried to imposemajority voting on firms by changing their bylaws failed this year.Even so, wise managers should voluntarily adopt majority voting, according to Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen &Katz, a Wall Street law firm that has generally helped managers resist increases in shareholder powerbutnow expects majority voting eventually to “become universal”. It advises that, at the very least,managers should adopt the Pfizer model, if only to avoid becoming the subject of even greater scrutinyfrom corporate-governance activists. Some firms might choose to go further, as Dell and Intel have donethis year, and adopt bylaws requiring majority voting.Shareholders may have been radicalised by the success last year of a lobbying effort by managersagainst a proposal from regulators to make it easier for shareholders to put up candidates in boardelections. It remains to be seen if they will be back for more in 2007. Certainly, some of the activistshareholders behind this year's resolutions have big plans. Where new voting rules are in place, they plancampaigns to vote out the chairman of the compensation committee at any firm that they think overpaysthe boss. If the 2006 annual meeting was unpleasant for managers, next year's could be far worse.Intangible opportunitiesCompanies are borrowing against their copyrights, trademarks and patentsNOT long ago, the value of companies resided mostly in things you could see and touch. Today it liesincreasingly in intangible assets such as the McDonald's name, the patent for Viagra and the rights toSpiderman. Baruch Lev, a finance professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, puts theimplied value of intangibles on Americancompanies' balance sheets at about $6 trillion, or two-thirds ofthe total. Much of this consists of intellectual property, the collective name for copyrights, trademarksand patents. Increasingly, companies and their clever bankers are using these assets to raise cash.The method of choice is securitisation, the issuing of bonds based on the various revenues thrown off byintellectual property. Late last month Dunkin' Brands, owner of Dunkin' Donuts, a snack-bar chain, raised$1.7 billion by selling bonds backed by, among other things, the royalties it will receive from itsfranchisees. The three private-equity firms that acquired Dunkin' Brands a few months ago have used thecash to repay the money they borrowed to buy the chain. This is the biggest intellectual-propertysecuritisation by far, says Jordan Yarett of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a law firm that hasworked on many such deals.Securitisations of intellectual property can be based on revenues from copyrights, trademarks (such aslogos) or patents. The best-known copyright deal was the issue in 1997 of $55m-worth of “Bowie Bonds”supported by the future sales of music by David Bowie, a British rock star. Bonds based on the films ofDreamWorks, Marvel comic books and the stories of John Steinbeck have also been sold. As well asDunkin' Brands, several restaurant chains and fashion firms have issued bonds backed by logos andbrands.Intellectual-property deals belong to a class known as operating-asset securitisations. These differ fromstandard securitisations of future revenues, such as bonds backed by the payments on a 30-yearmortgage or a car loan, in that the borrower has to make his asset work. If investors are to recoup theirmoney, the assets being securitised must be “actively exploited”, says Mr Yarett: DreamWorks mustcontinue to churn out box-office hits.The market for such securitisations is still small. Jay Eisbruck, of Moody's, a rating agency, reckons thataround $10 billion-worth of bonds are outs tanding. But there is “big potential,” he says, pointing out thatlicensing patented technology generates $100 billion a year and involves thousands of companies.Raising money this way can make sense not only for clever private-equity firms, but also for companieswith low (or no) credit ratings that cannot easily tap the capital markets or with few tangible assets ascollateral for bank loans. Some universities have joined in, too. Yale built a new medical complex withsome of the roughly $100m it raised securitising patent royalties from Zerit, an anti-HIV drug.It may be harder for investors to decide whether such deals are worth their while. They are, after all,highly complex and riskier than standard securitisations. The most obvious risk is that the investorscannot be sure that the assets will yield what borrowers promise: technology moves on, fashions changeand the demand for sugary snacks may collapse. Valuing intellectual property—an exercise based。
《经济学人》概念总结

1、绝对优势(Absolute advantage)如果一个国家用一单位资源生产的某种产品比另一个国家多,那么,这个国家在这种产品的生产上与另一国相比就具有绝对优势。
2、逆向选择(Adverse choice)在此状况下,保险公司发现它们的客户中有太大的一部分来自高风险群体。
3、选择成本(Alternative cost)如果以最好的另一种方式使用的某种资源,它所能生产的价值就是选择成本,也可以称之为机会成本。
4、需求的弧弹性(Arc elasticity of demand)如果P1和Q1分别是价格和需求量的初始值,P2 和Q2 为第二组值,那么,弧弹性就等于-(Q1-Q2)(P1+P2)/(P1-P2)(Q1+Q2)5、非对称的信息(Asymmetric information)在某些市场中,每个参与者拥有的信息并不相同。
例如,在旧车市场上,有关旧车质量的信息,卖者通常要比潜在的买者知道得多。
6、平均成本(Average cost)平均成本是总成本除以产量。
也称为平均总成本。
7、平均固定成本( Average fixed cost)平均固定成本是总固定成本除以产量。
8、平均产品(Average product)平均产品是总产量除以投入品的数量。
9、平均可变成本(Average variable cost)平均可变成本是总可变成本除以产量。
10、投资的β(Beta)β度量的是与投资相联的不可分散的风险。
对于一种股票而言,它表示所有现行股票的收益发生变化时,一种股票的收益会如何敏感地变化。
11、债券收益(Bond yield)债券收益是债券所获得的利率。
12、收支平衡图(Break-even chart)收支平衡图表示一种产品所出售的总数量改变时总收益和总成本是如何变化的。
收支平衡点是为避免损失而必须卖出的最小数量。
13、预算线(Budget line)预算线表示消费者所能购买的商品X和商品Y的数量的全部组合。
《经济学人》杂志个案研究

《经济学人》杂志个案研究《经济学人》杂志作为全球著名的财经杂志之一,以独特的观点和深入的分析为读者提供财经新闻、商业趋势和全球市场动态。
本文通过具体案例分析,探讨《经济学人》杂志如何根据关键词和内容撰写文章。
对于关键词的处理。
《经济学人》杂志非常注重关键词的选取和运用。
例如,当“新型冠状病毒”成为全球的热点时,《经济学人》杂志迅速响应,撰写了一系列与新型冠状病毒相关的文章。
这些文章不仅准确介绍了新型冠状病毒的基本情况、传播途径和症状,还从经济学的角度分析了其对全球经济的影响。
在内容方面,《经济学人》杂志的和编辑们始终紧扣主题,以深入浅出的方式向读者传递有价值的信息。
在撰写与新型冠状病毒相关的文章时,他们会从不同角度阐述这一主题。
例如,有一篇文章探讨了新型冠状病毒对全球经济的影响,指出由于疫情导致多个国家采取封锁措施,对全球经济活动造成了巨大冲击。
另一篇文章则医疗设备行业如何应对新型冠状病毒带来的挑战,指出该行业在疫情期间发挥了关键作用,同时也面临着生产压力和供应短缺等问题。
在形式上,《经济学人》杂志的文章具有以下特点:段落结构清晰,逻辑性强;标题简明扼要,重点突出;使用简单易懂的语言,避免使用过于复杂的术语;控制文章长度,尽可能简洁明了。
这些特点使得读者能够快速了解文章的核心内容,并轻松地跟随作者的思路。
通过本案例研究可以发现,《经济学人》杂志在关键词选取和内容撰写方面具有很高的专业素养和独特的视角。
他们能够迅速响应热点话题,用深入浅出的方式传递有价值的信息,使读者在轻松的阅读过程中获得启发和收获。
《经济学人》杂志作为全球领先的商业新闻杂志之一,以其独特的语言风格和深刻的社会洞察力吸引了全球广大的读者。
本文旨在深入研究《经济学人》杂志的语言风格,探讨其如何影响读者对文章的理解和接受。
为了深入了解《经济学人》杂志的语言风格,我们采用了以下研究方法:样本选择:从近五年的《经济学人》杂志中选取具有代表性的文章作为研究样本,涵盖政治、经济、科技等各个领域。
The-Economist-常用词汇

The Economist 《经济学人》常用词汇总结,太珍贵了!!1、绝对优势(Absolute advantage)如果一个国家用一单位资源生产的某种产品比另一个国家多,那么,这个国家在这种产品的生产上与另一国相比就具有绝对优势。
2、逆向选择(Adverse choice)在此状况下,保险公司发现它们的客户中有太大的一部分来自高风险群体。
3、选择成本(Alternative cost)如果以最好的另一种方式使用的某种资源,它所能生产的价值就是选择成本,也可以称之为机会成本。
4、需求的弧弹性( Arc elasticity of demand)如果P1和Q1分别是价格和需求量的初始值,P2 和Q2 为第二组值,那么,弧弹性就等于-(Q1-Q2)(P1+P2)/(P1-P2)(Q1+Q2)5、非对称的信息(Asymmetric information)在某些市场中,每个参与者拥有的信息并不相同。
例如,在旧车市场上,有关旧车质量的信息,卖者通常要比潜在的买者知道得多。
6、平均成本(Average cost)平均成本是总成本除以产量。
也称为平均总成本。
7、平均固定成本( Average fixed cost)平均固定成本是总固定成本除以产量。
8、平均产品(Average product)平均产品是总产量除以投入品的数量。
9、平均可变成本(Average variable cost)平均可变成本是总可变成本除以产量。
10、投资的β(Beta)β度量的是与投资相联的不可分散的风险。
对于一种股票而言,它表示所有现行股票的收益发生变化时,一种股票的收益会如何敏感地变化。
11、债券收益(Bond yield)债券收益是债券所获得的利率。
12、收支平衡图(Break-even chart)收支平衡图表示一种产品所出售的总数量改变时总收益和总成本是如何变化的。
收支平衡点是为避免损失而必须卖出的最小数量。
13、预算线(Budget line)预算线表示消费者所能购买的商品X和商品Y的数量的全部组合。
《经济学人》杂志原版英文(整理完整版)之欧阳道创编

Digest Of The. Economist. 2006(6-7)Hard to digestA wealth of genetic information is to be found in the human gutBACTERIA, like people, can be divided into friend and foe. Inspired by evidence that the friendly sort may help with a range of ailments, many people consume bacteria in the form of yogurts and dietary supplements. Such a smattering of artificial additions, however, represents but a drop in the ocean. There are at least 800 types of bacteria living in the human gut. And research by Steven Gill of the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland, and his colleagues, published in this week's Science, suggests that the collective genome of these organisms is so large that it contains 100 times as many genes as the human genome itself.Dr Gill and his team were able to come to this conclusion by extracting bacterial DNA from the faeces of two volunteers. Because of the complexity of the samples,they were not able to reconstruct the entire genomes of each of the gut bacteria, just the individual genes. But that allowed them to make an estimate of numbers.What all these bacteria are doing is tricky to identify—the bacteria themselves are difficult to cultivate. So the researchers guessed at what they might be up to by comparing the genes they discovered with published databases of genes whose functions are already known.This comparison helped Dr Gill identify for the first time the probable enzymatic processes by which bacteria help humans to digest the complex carbohydrates in plants. The bacteria also contain a plentiful supply of genes involved in the synthesis of chemicals essential to human life—including two B vitamins and certain essential amino acids—although the team merely showed that these metabolic pathways exist rather than proving that they are used. Nevertheless, the pathways they found leave humans looking more like ruminants: animals such as goats and sheep that use bacteria to break down otherwise indigestible matter in the plants they eat.The broader conclusion Dr Gill draws is that peopleare superorganisms whose metabolism represents an amalgamation of human and microbial attributes. The notion of a superorganism has emerged before, as researchers in other fields have come to view humans as having a diverse internal ecosystem. This, suggest some, will be crucial to the success of personalised medicine, as different people will have different responses to drugs, depending on their microbial flora. Accordingly, the next step, says Dr Gill, is to see how microbial populations vary between people of different ages, backgrounds and diets.Another area of research is the process by which these helpful bacteria first colonise the digestive tract. Babies acquire their gut flora as they pass down the birth canal and take a gene-filled gulp of their mother's vaginal and faecal flora. It might not be the most delicious of first meals, but it could well be an important one.Zapping the bluesThe rebirth of electric-shock treatmentELECTRICITY has long been used to treat medical disorders. As early as the second century AD, Galen, a Greek physician, recommended the use of electric eels fortreating headaches and facial pain. In the 1930s Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, two Italian psychiatrists, used electroconvulsive therapy to treat schizophrenia. These days, such rigorous techniques are practised less widely. But researchers are still investigating how a gentler electric therapy appears to treat depression.Vagus-nerve stimulation, to give it its proper name, was originally developed to treat severe epilepsy. It requires a pacemaker-like device to be implanted in a patient's chest and wires from it threaded up to the vagus nerve on the left side of his neck. In the normal course of events, this provides an electrical pulse to the vagus nerve for 30 seconds every five minutes.This treatment does not always work, but in some cases where it failed (the number of epileptic seizures experienced by a patient remaining the same), that patient nevertheless reported feeling much better after receiving the implant. This secondary effect led to trials for treating depression and, in 2005, America's Food and Drug Administration approved the therapy for depression that fails to respond to all conventional treatments, includingdrugs and psychotherapy.Not only does the treatment work, but its effects appear to be long lasting. A study led by Charles Conway of Saint Louis University in Missouri, and presented to a recent meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, has found that 70% of patients who are better after one year stay better after two years as well.The technique builds on a procedure called deep-brain stimulation, in which electrodes are implanted deep into the white matter of patients' brains and used to “reboot” faulty neural circuitry. Such an operation is a big undertaking, requiring a full day of surgery and carrying a risk of the patient suffering a stroke. Only a small number of people have been treated this way. In contrast, the device that stimulates the vagus nerve can be implanted in 45 minutes without a stay in hospital.The trouble is that vagus-nerve stimulation can take a long time to produce its full beneficial effect. According to Dr Conway, scans taken using a technique called positron-emission tomography show significant changes in brain activity starting three months after treatment begins. Thechanges are similar to the improvements seen in patients who undergo other forms of antidepression treatment. The brain continues to change over the following 21 months. Dr Conway says that patients should be told that the antidepressant effects could be slow in coming.However, Richard Selway of King's College Hospital, London, found that his patients' moods improved just weeks after the implant. Although brain scans are useful in determining the longevity of the treatment, Mr Selway notes that visible changes in the brain do not necessarily correlate perfectly with changes in mood.Nobody knows why stimulating the vagus nerve improves the mood of depressed patients, but Mr Selway has a theory. He believes that the electrical stimulation causes a region in the brain stem called the locus caeruleus (Latin, ironically, for “blue place”) to flood the brain with norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter implicated in alertness, concentration and motivation—that is, the mood states missing in depressed patients. Whatever the mechanism, for the depressed a therapy that is relatively safe and long lasting is rare cause for cheer.The shape of things to comeHow tomorrow's nuclear power stations will differ from today'sTHE agency in charge of promoting nuclear power in America describes a new generation of reactors that will be “highly economical” with “enhanced safety”, that “minimise wastes” and will prove “proliferation resistant”. No doubt they will bake a mean apple pie, too.Unfortunately, in the world of nuclear energy, fine words are not enough. America got away lightly with its nuclear accident. When the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania overheated in 1979 very little radiation leaked, and there were no injuries. Europe was not so lucky. The accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986 killed dozens immediately and has affected (sometimes fatally) the health of tens of thousands at the least. Even discounting the association of nuclear power with nuclear weaponry, people have good reason to be suspicious of claims that reactors are safe.Yet political interest in nuclear power is reviving across the world, thanks in part to concerns about globalwarming and energy security. Already, some 441 commercial reactors operate in 31 countries and provide 17% of the planet's electricity, according to America's Department of Energy. Until recently, the talk was of how to retire these reactors gracefully. Now it is of how to extend their lives. In addition, another 32 reactors are being built, mostly in India, China and their neighbours. These new power stations belong to what has been called the third generation of reactors, designs that have been informed by experience and that are considered by their creators to be advanced. But will these new stations really be safer than their predecessors?Clearly, modern designs need to be less accident prone. The most important feature of a safe design is that it “fails safe”. Fo r a reactor, this means that if its control systems stop working it shuts down automatically, safely dissipates the heat produced by the reactions in its core, and stops both the fuel and the radioactive waste produced by nuclear reactions from escaping by keeping them within some sort of containment vessel. Reactors that follow such rules are called “passive”. Most modern designs are passive to someextent and some newer ones are truly so. However, some of the genuinely passive reactors are also likely to be more expensive to run.Nuclear energy is produced by atomic fission. A large atom (usually uranium or plutonium) breaks into two smaller ones, releasing energy and neutrons. The neutrons then trigger further break-ups. And so on. If this “chain reaction” can be controlled, the energy released can be used to boil water, produce steam and drive a turbine that generates electricity. If it runs away, the result is a meltdown and an accident (or, in extreme circumstances, a nuclear explosion—though circumstances are never that extreme in a reactor because the fuel is less fissile than the material in a bomb). In many new designs the neutrons, and thus the chain reaction, are kept under control by passing them through water to slow them down. (Slow neutrons trigger more break ups than fast ones.) This water is exposed to a pressure of about 150 atmospheres—a pressure that means it remains liquid even at high temperatures. When nuclear reactions warm the water, its density drops, and the neutrons passing through it are no longer slowedenough to trigger further reactions. That negative feedback stabilises the reaction rate.Can business be cool?Why a growing number of firms are taking global warming seriouslyRUPERT MURDOCH is no green activist. But in Pebble Beach later this summer, the annual gathering of executivesof Mr Murdoch's News Corporation—which last year led to a dramatic shift in the media conglomerate's attitude tothe internet—will be addressed by several leading environmentalists, including a vice-president turned climatechangemovie star. Last month BSkyB, a British satellite-television company chaired by Mr Murdoch and run by hisson, James, declared itself “carbon-neutral”, having taken various steps to cut or offset its discharges of carboninto the atmosphere.The army of corporate greens is growing fast. Late last year HSBC became the first big bank to announce that itwas carbon-neutral, joining other financial institutions, including Swiss Re, a reinsurer, and Goldman Sachs, aninvestment bank, in waging war on climate-warminggases (of which carbon dioxide is the main culprit). Last yearGeneral Electric (GE), an industrial powerhouse, launched its “Ecomagination” strategy, aiming to cut its output ofgreenhouse gases and to invest heavily in clean (ie, carbon-free) technologies. In October Wal-Mart announced aseries of environmental schemes, including doubling the fuel-efficiency of its fleet of vehicles within a decade.Tesco and Sainsbury, two of Britain's biggest retailers, are competing fiercely to be the greenest. And on June 7thsome leading British bosses lobbied Tony Blair for a more ambitious policy on climate change, even if that involvesharsher regulation.The greening of business is by no means universal, however. Money from Exxon Mobil, Ford and General Motorshelped pay for television advertisements aired recently in America by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, with thedaft slogan “Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution; we call it life”. Besides, environmentalist critics say, some firmsa re engaged in superficial “greenwash” to boost the image of essentially climate-hurting businesses. Take BP, themost prominent corporate advocate of action on climatechange, with its “Beyond Petroleum” ad campaign, highprofileinvestments in green energy, and even a “carbon calculator” on its website that helps consumers measuretheir personal “carbon footprint”, or overall emissions of carbon. Yet, critics complain, BP's recent record profits arelargely thanks to sales of huge amounts of carbon-packed oil and gas.On the other hand, some free-market thinkers see the support of firms for regulation of carbon as the latestattempt at “regulatory capture”, by those who stand to profit from new rules. Max Schulz of the ManhattanInstitute, a conservative think tan k, notes darkly that “Enron was into pushing the idea of climate change, becauseit was good for its business”.Others argue that climate change has no more place in corporate boardrooms than do discussions of other partisanpolitical issues, such as Darfur or gay marriage. That criticism, at least, is surely wrong. Most of the corporateconverts say they are acting not out of some vague sense of social responsibility, or even personal angst, butbecause climate change creates real business risks andopportunities—from regulatory compliance to insuringclients on flood plains. And although these concerns vary hugely from one company to the next, few firms can besure of remaining unaffected.Testing timesResearchers are working on ways to reduce the need for animal experiments, but new laws mayincrease the number of experiments neededIN AN ideal world, people would not perform experiments on animals. For the people, they are expensive. For theanimals, they are stressful and often painful.That ideal world, sadly, is still some way away. People need new drugs and vaccines. They want protection fromthe toxicity of chemicals. The search for basic scientific answers goes on. Indeed, the European Commission isforging ahead with proposals that will increase the number of animal experiments carried out in the EuropeanUnion, by requiring toxicity tests on every chemical approved for use within the union's borders in the past 25years.Already, the commission has identified 140,000 chemicals that have not yet been tested. It wants 30,000 oftheseto be examined right away, and plans to spend between €4 billion-8 billion ($5 billion-10 billion) doing so. Thenumber of animals used for toxicity testing in Europe will thus, experts reckon, quintuple from just over 1m a yearto about 5m, unless they are saved by some dramatic advances in non-animal testing technology. At the moment,roughly 10% of European animal tests are for general toxicity, 35% for basic research, 45% for drugs andvaccines, and the remaining 10% a variety of uses such as diagnosing diseases.Animal experimentation will therefore be around for some time yet. But the hunt for substitutes continues, and lastweekend the Middle European Society for Alternative Methods to Animal Testing met in Linz, Austria, to reviewprogress.A good place to start finding alternatives for toxicity tests is the liver—the organ responsible for breaking toxicchemicals down into safer molecules that can then be excreted. Two firms, one large and one small, told themeeting how they were using human liver cells removed incidentally during surgery to test various substancesforlong-term toxic effects.PrimeCyte, the small firm, grows its cells in cultures over a few weeks and doses them regularly with the substanceunder investigation. The characteristics of the cells are carefully monitored, to look for changes in theirmicroanatomy.Pfizer, the big firm, also doses its cultures regularly, but rather than studying individual cells in detail, it counts cellnumbers. If the number of cells in a culture changes after a sample is added, that suggests the chemical inquestion is bad for the liver.In principle, these techniques could be applied to any chemical. In practice, drugs (and, in the case of PrimeCyte,food supplements) are top of the list. But that might change if the commission has its way: those140,000screenings look like a lucrative market, although nobody knows whether the new tests will be ready for use by2009, when the commission proposes that testing should start.Other tissues, too, can be tested independently of animals. Epithelix, a small firm in Geneva, has developed anartificial version of the lining of the lungs. According toHuang Song, one of Epithelix's researchers, thefirm'scultured cells have similar microanatomy to those found in natural lung linings, and respond in the same way tovarious chemical messengers. Dr Huang says that they could be used in long-term toxicity tests of airbornechemicals and could also help identify treatments for lung diseases.The immune system can be mimicked and tested, too. ProBioGen, a company based in Berlin, is developing anartificial human lymph node which, it reckons, could have prevented the near-disastrous consequences of a drugtrial held in Britain three months ago, in which (despite the drug having passed animal tests) six men sufferedmultiple organ failure and nearly died. The drug the men were given made their immune systems hyperactive.Such a response would, the firm's scientists reckon, have been identified by their lymph node, which is made fromcells that provoke the immune system into a response. ProBioGen's lymph node could thus work better than animaltesting.Another way of cutting the number of animalexperiments would be tochange the way that vaccines are tested, according to CoenraadHendriksen of the Netherlands Vaccine Institute. At the moment, allbatches of vaccine are subject to the same battery of tests. DrHendriksen argues that this is over-rigorous. When new vaccine culturesare made, belt-and-braces tests obviously need to be applied. But if abatch of vaccine is derived from an existing culture, he suggests that itneed be tested only to make sure it is identical to the batch from which itis derived. That would require fewer test animals.All this suggests that though there is still some way to go before drugs,vaccines and other substances can be tested routinely on cells ratherthan live animals, useful progress is being made. What is harder to see ishow the use of animals might be banished from fundamental research.Anger managementTo one emotion, men are more sensitive than women MEN are notoriously insensitive to the emotional world around them. At least, that is the stereotype peddled by athousand women's magazines. And a study by two researchers at the University of Melbourne, inAustralia,confirms that men are, indeed, less sensitive to emotion than women, with one important and suggestiveexception. Men are acutely sensitive to the anger of other men.Mark Williams and Jason Mattingley, whose study has just been published in Current Biology, looked at the way aperson's sex affects his or her response to emotionally charged facial expressions. People from all cultures agreeon what six basic expressions of emotion look like. Whether the face before you is expressing anger, disgust, fear,joy, sadness or surprise seems to be recognised universally—which suggests that the expressions involved areinnate, rather than learned.Dr Williams and Dr Mattingley showed the participants in their study photographs of these emotional expressions inmixed sets of either four or eight. They asked the participants to look for a particular sort of expression, andmeasured the amount of time it took them to find it. The researchers found, in agreement with previous studies,that both men and women identified angry expressions most quickly. But they also found that anger was morequicklyidentified on a male face than a female one.Moreover, most participants could find an angry face just as quickly when it was mixed in a group of eightphotographs as when it was part of a group of four. That was in stark contrast to the other five sorts of expression,which took more time to find when they had to be sorted from a larger group. This suggests that something in thebrain is attuned to picking out angry expressions, and that it is especially concerned about angry men. Also, thishighly tuned ability seems more important to males than females, since the two researchers found that men pickedout the angry expressions faster than women did, even though women were usually quicker than men to recognizeevery other sort of facial expression.Dr Williams and Dr Mattingley suspect the reason for this is that being able to spot an angry individual quickly hasa survival advantage—and, since anger is more likely to turn into lethal violence in men than in women, the abilityto spot angry males quickly is particularly valuable.As to why men are more sensitive to anger than women, it is presumably because they are far more likely togetkilled by it. Most murders involve men killing other men—even today the context of homicide is usually aspontaneous dispute over status or sex.The ability to spot quickly that an alpha male is in a foul mood would thus have great survival value. It would allowthe sharp-witted time to choose appeasement, defence or possibly even pre-emptive attack. And, if it is right, thisstudy also confirms a lesson learned by generations of bar-room tough guys and schoolyard bullies: if you wantattention, get angry.The shareholders' revoltA turning point in relations between company owners and bosses?SOMETHING strange has been happening this year at company annual meetings in America:shareholders have been voting decisively against the recommendations of managers. Until now, mostshareholders have, like so many sheep, routinely voted in accordance with the advice of the people theyemploy to run the company. This year managers have already been defeated at some 32 companies,including household names such as Boeing, ExxonMobil and GeneralMotors.This shareholders' revolt has focused entirely on one issue: the method by which members of the boardof directors are elected. Shareholder resolutions on other subjects have mostly been defeated, as usual.The successful resolutions called for directors to be elected by majority voting, instead of by thetraditional method of “plurality”—which in practice meant that only votes cast in favour were counted,and that a single vote for a candidate would be enough to get him elected.Several companies, led by Pfizer, a drug giant, saw defeat looming and pre-emptively adopted a formalmajority-voting policy that was weaker than in the shareholder resolution. This required any director whofailed to secure a majority of votes to tender his resignation to the board, which would then be free todecide whether or not to accept it. Under the shareholder resolution, any candidate failing to secure amajority of the votes cast simply would not be elected. Intriguingly, the shareholder resolution wasdefeated at four-fifths of the firms that adopted a Pfizer-style majority voting rule, whereas it succeedednearly ninetimes out of ten at firms retaining the plurality rule.Unfortunately for shareholders, their victories may prove illusory, as the successful resolutions wereall“precatory”—meaning that they merely advised management on the course of action preferred byshareholders, but did not force managers to do anything. Several resolutions that tried to imposemajority voting on firms by changing their bylaws failed this year.Even so, wise managers should voluntarily adopt majority voting, according to Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen&Katz, a Wall Street law firm that has generally helped managers resist increases in shareholder power butnow expects majority voting eventually to “become universal”. It advises that, at the very least,managers should adopt the Pfizer model, if only to avoid becoming the subject of even greater scrutinyfrom corporate-governance activists. Some firms might choose to go further, as Dell and Intel have donethis year, and adopt bylaws requiring majority voting.Shareholders may have been radicalised by the success last year of a lobbying effort by managersagainst a proposal from regulators to make it easier for shareholders to put upcandidates in boardelections. It remains to be seen if they will be back for more in 2007. Certainly, some of the activistshareholders behind this year's resolutions have big plans. Where new voting rules are in place, they plancampaigns to vote out the chairman of the compensation committee at any firm that they think overpaysthe boss. If the 2006 annual meeting was unpleasant for managers, next year's could be far worse. Intangible opportunitiesCompanies are borrowing against their copyrights, trademarks and patentsNOT long ago, the value of companies resided mostly in things you could see and touch. Today it liesincreasingly in intangible assets such as the McDonald's name, the patent for Viagra and the rights toSpiderman. Baruch Lev, a finance professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, puts theimplied value of intangibles on American companies' balance sheets at about $6 trillion, or two-thirds ofthe total. Much of this consists of intellectual property, the collective name for copyrights, trademarksand patents. Increasingly, companies and their clever bankers are usingthese assets to raise cash.The method of choice is securitisation, the issuing of bonds based on the various revenues thrown off byintellectual property. Late last month Dunkin' Brands, owner of Dunkin' Donuts, a snack-bar chain, raised$1.7 billion by selling bonds backed by, among other things, the royalties it will receive from itsfranchisees. The three private-equity firms that acquired Dunkin' Brands a few months ago have used thecash to repay the money they borrowed to buy the chain. This is the biggest intellectual-propertysecuritisation by far, says Jordan Yarett of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a law firm that hasworked on many such deals.Securitisations of intellectual property can be based on revenues from copyrights, trademarks (such aslogos) or patents. The best-known copyright deal was the issue in 1997 of $55m-worth of “Bowie Bonds”supported by the future sales of music by David Bowie, a British rock star. Bonds based on the films ofDreamWorks, Marvel comic books and the stories of John Steinbeck have also been sold. As well asDunkin' Brands, several restaurant chains andfashion firms have issued bonds backed by logos andbrands.Intellectual-property deals belong to a class known as operating-asset securitisations. These differ fromstandard securitisations of future revenues, such as bonds backed by the payments on a 30-yearmortgage or a car loan, in that the borrower has to make his asset work. If investors are to recoup theirmoney, the assets being securitised must be “actively exploited”, says Mr Yarett: DreamWorks mustcontinue to churn out box-office hits.The market for such securitisations is still small. Jay Eisbruck, of Moody's, a rating agency, reckons thataround $10 billion-worth of bonds are outstanding. But there is “big potential,” he says, pointing out thatlicensing patented technology generates $100 billion a year and involves thousands of companies.Raising money this way can make sense not only for clever private-equity firms, but also for companieswith low (or no) credit ratings that cannot easily tap the capital markets or with few tangible assets ascollateral for bank loans. Some universities have joined in, too. Yale built a new medical complex withsome of the roughly $100m it。
中国最具影响力的十位经济学家

我认为不可不知。
经济学怪才——张五常·1935年生于香港。
·1959年到洛杉矶加州大学经济系跟从现代产权经济学创始人阿尔奇安学习。
·1963年—1967年攻读博士学位。
1967年到芝加哥大学跟从科斯做博士后研究。
·1969年为西雅图华盛顿大学教授。
1982年至今为香港大学经济金融学院教授。
·《世界商业评论》对张五常教授的评价是:一代经济学怪才!国际知名经济学家,新制度经济学和现代产权经济学的创始人之一,现任香港大学教授、经济金融学院院长。
1997年,他当选美国西部经济学会会长,这一职位是第一次授予美国本土之外的经济学家。
他的理论主张在学术界引起广泛争议。
其对国内股份转让、外汇转让、政府管制等发表了自己的独特看法。
张五常在广州谈中国应对WTO挑战时,认为中国农业人口未来应降到25%……几乎他的每次公开言论都会引起一片哗然--当然其中很重要的原因有张五常教授对自己夸张的评价赢得了很多眼球的作用。
他的经济学“实用论”亦受到大众的广泛关注。
有的人评价他是天才,有的人说他哗众取宠。
1969年他以名为《佃农理论——引证于中国的农业及台湾的土地改革》的博士论文轰动西方经济学界。
他的《合约机构与非私产的理论》、《企业的合约性质》等论文继续发展了他在交易费用以及产权重要性方面的理论。
1991年他作为唯一一位未获诺贝尔奖的经济学者而被邀请参加了当年的诺贝尔颁奖典礼。
忧国忧民的经济学大师——杨小凯·原名杨曦光,湖南人,1948年出生于吉林敦化。
1988年毕业于美国普林斯顿大学经济学博士。
·1998年1月-2004年7月:哈佛大学国际发展研究院和哈佛大学国际发展研究中心成员;·1993年1月-2004年7月:莫纳什大学经济学系高级讲师、教授;·1987年-1998年:耶鲁大学经济研究中心研究员;·《世界商业评论》对杨小凯教授的评价是:忧国忧民的经济学大师!杨小凯绝对是一个充满传奇色彩的人。
功能对等理论视角下财经新闻英汉翻译研究——以《经济学人》为例

功能对等理论视角下财经新闻英汉翻译研究——以《经济学人》为例一、引言当今世界,经济全球化不断深入,各国在政治、经济等领域交流日益密切,了解国际市场、掌握国际经济形势成为广大群众一大诉求,因此英语财经类新闻的翻译显得尤为重要。
《经济学人》作为一本财经类杂志,具有较高的国际知名度,其新闻报道兼具权威性与实效性,该杂志的准确翻译可成为了解国际金融信息的高质量渠道之一。
奈达的功能对等理论强调信息的准确传递和强调读者反应,即在准确传递信息的基础上,原文读者与译文读者应有一致的阅读体验。
文章以功能对等理论为基础,试图探讨财经类新闻在翻译中如何实现原文与译文读者取得一致的阅读体验。
二、功能对等理论动态对等的概念是尤金•奈达于20 世纪60 年代在《翻译科学探索》一书中提出的。
动态对等指出,译者不能仅仅关注源语与目的语间的对应关系,而该关注一种动态的关系,即目的语读者和目的语信息间的关系应与源语读者和源语信息间的关系保持一致[1]。
后来,为避免公众对“动态”一词的误解,在《从一种语言到另一种语言》一书中,奈达将动态对等替换为功能对等,进一步完善了理论内容[2]。
功能对等理论强调读者反应,即目的语读者对译文的阅读反应需与源语读者对源语的阅读反应保持基本一致,这就要求译文与原文在功能上达到最贴近的对等。
然而,在翻译实践中译者不可避免地会遇到无法跨越的障碍,例如源语中的文化表述、语言形式等很难再现,根据功能对等理论,这时应首先保证信息的准确传递,即最自然的对等。
可见,功能对等理论的两大核心即是信息的准确传递与读者反应[3]。
国内对功能对等理论的研究与应用涉及广泛,包括新闻、广告、文学、影视字幕等诸多翻译领域。
而新闻具有面向大众、真实准确、及时简明的特点,因此新闻翻译应具有更高的可读性与交际性。
财经类新闻同时具有专业性与民生性,二者的对立统一关系需要译者在翻译中更需要坚持功能对等,以最大限度让目的语读者获得与源语读者相同的阅读体验。
《经济学人》中英对照

(15)《经济学人》中英对照TEXT 1 Rebuilding the American dream chine 重建美国梦机器 Jan 19th xx | NEW YORK From The Economist print edition FOR America's colleges, January is a month of reckoning. Most applications for the next academic year beginning in the autumn have to be de by the end of De mber, so a university's popularity is put to an objective standard: how ny people want to attend. One of the more unlikely offi s to have been flooded with il is that of the City University of New York (CUNY), a public college that lacks, among other things, a famous sports team, bucolic campuses and raucous parties (it doesn't even have dorms), and, until re ntly, academic credibility. 对美国的大学而言,一月是一个清算的月份。
大多数要进入将于秋季开学的下一学年学习的申请必须在12月底前完成,因此一所大学的声望就有了客观依据:申请人的多少。
纽约城市大学,一所公立学院,与其他学校相比,它没有一支声名显赫的运动队,没有田园诗一般的校园,也没有喧嚣嘈杂的派对——甚至连宿舍都没有,而且,直到最近也没取得学术上的可信度,可就是这所大学的办公室塞满了学生们寄来的申请函,这简直有些令人难以置信。
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China in LaosBusted flushHow a Sino-Lao special economic zone hit the skidsMay 26th 2011 | BOTEN, LAOS | from the print edition∙Tweet∙Soon all this will be jungle againAT HOME and abroad, China is a byword for fast-track development, where yesterday’s paddy field is tomorrow’s factory, highway or hotel. Less noticed is that such development can just as quickly go into reverse. Golden City, in Boten, just over the border from China in tiny Laos, is a case in point.When a Hong Kong-registered company signed a 30-year, renewable lease with the Lao government in 2003 to set up a 1,640-hectare special economic zone built with mainland money and expertise, Golden City was touted as afuturistic hub for trade and tourism. The builders promptly went to work, and a cluster of pastel blocks rose amid the green hills of northern Laos. Thousands of Chinese tourists and entrepreneurs poured into the enclave, drawn largely by the forbidden pleasures and profits of gambling, which is illegal in China, except in Macau. Today the main casino, inside a three-star hotel, lies abandoned, its baize tables thick with dust.The trouble started in December, when Chinese gamblers found that the operators refused to let them leave until they had coughed up for betting losses. Officials from Hubei province apparently negotiated the release of several “hostages”, but many more continued to be held against their will. Accounts in the Chinese media say that casino recruiters lured gamblers with offers of free travel and hotel rooms, only to be kept captive and beaten when their credit ran out. Lao villagers swap grisly tales of corpses dumped in the river.Related topics∙The yuan∙Asia-Pacific markets∙Chinese markets∙World markets∙LaosChinese authorities have since put the boot into Boten. In March the foreign ministry warned citizens not to gamble in Laos and accused Golden City of cheating its cross-border customers. It said it had demanded that Laos close down the casino. Last month the casino duly shut, and the smaller gaming halls have since gone too. The 232-room hotel, which is almost empty, will be next.Most shop and restaurant owners have packed up and left, as have the Thai transvestite show and the legions of prostitutes. Stricter visa rules for Chinese tourists have added to the squeeze. A Lao policeman, who admits to having nothing to do, puts the town’s dwindling population at 2,000, down from 10,000 at its peak. The enclave’s economy seems to have collapsed just as the builders hit their stride with a new high-rise hotel and a shopping centre bristling with columns in the classical style.Golden City says it has pumped $130m into the project’s first phase, including funds from outside investors. A company official, Ginger He, puts a brave face on things, arguing that the slump is a chance to rebrand the enclave as a wholesome tourist destination and import-export zone. She blames the bad publicity on shady Chinese concessionaires who ran the card games in the casino—as if the company had expected angels. GoldenCity has since declared force majeure to revoke its contracts. Investors might wish to sue under Lao law. But Miss He points out that China had ordered Laos to close the casino. “Little brother cannot fight with big brother,” she says.At the best of times, cross-border casinos are risky investments, since China often cracks down on outbound gamblers. Warlords in Myanmar have previously felt the consequences, with gambling dens left to rot in the jungle after borders grew tighter. Business folk in Boten say the action may have moved to casinos elsewhere in Laos and Myanmar. A Macau-based company has recently completed a giant riverside casino in the so-called Golden Triangle, where Laos meets Thailand and Myanmar.But Golden City was supposed to represent more than just a fast buck. The developers persuaded Laos of the benefits of allowing a Chinese-run enclave. Its residents, they said, would “form a huge community and a modern society”, in the words of their brochure. The zone also took on some of the trappings of the Chinese state, including uniformed security guards, development slogans and even the Chinese currency. This gave the false impression that it enjoyed official backing. Instead, it became an irritant that Beijing had to put in its place.from the print edition | AsiaEconomics focusDrain or gain?Poor countries can end up benefiting when their brightest citizens emigrateMay 26th 2011 | from the print edition∙Tweet∙WHEN people in rich countries worry about migration, they tend to think of low-paid incomers who compete for jobs as construction workers, dishwashers or farmhands. When people in developing countries worry about migration, they are usually concerned at the prospect of their best and brightest decamping to Silicon Valley or to hospitals and universities in the developed world. These are the kind of workers that countries like Britain, Canada and Australia try to attract by using immigration rules that privilege college graduates.Lots of studies have found that well-educated people from developing countries are particularly likely to emigrate. By some estimates,two-thirds of highly educated Cape Verdeans live outside the country. A big survey of Indian households carried out in 2004 asked about family members who had moved abroad. It found that nearly 40% of emigrants had more than a high-school education, compared with around 3.3% of all Indians over the age of 25. This “brain drain” has long bothered policymakers in poor countries. They fear that it hurts their economies, depriving them of much-needed skilled workers who could have taught at their universities, worked in their hospitals and come up with clever new products for their factories to make.Many now take issue with this view (see article). Several economists reckon that the brain-drain hypothesis fails to account for the effects of remittances, for the beneficial effects of returning migrants, and for the possibility that being able to migrate to greener pastures induces people to get more education. Some argue that once these factors are taken into account, an exodus of highly skilled people could turn out to be anet benefit to the countries they leave. Recent studies of migration from countries as far apart as Ghana, Fiji, India and Romania have found support for this “brain gain” idea.Related items∙Migration: The future of mobility May 26th 2011Related topics∙Poverty∙Economics∙Business∙United States∙RomaniaThe most obvious way in which migrants repay their homelands is through remittances. Workers from developing countries remitted a total of $325 billion in 2010, according to the World Bank. In Lebanon, Lesotho, Nepal, Tajikistan and a few other places, remittances are more than 20% of GDP.A skilled migrant may earn several multiples of what his income would have been had he stayed at home. A study of Romanian migrants to America found that the average emigrant earned almost $12,000 a year more in America than he would have done in his native land, a huge premium for someone from a country where income per person is around $7,500 (at market exchange rates).It is true that many skilled migrants have been educated and trained partly at the expense of their (often cash-strapped) governments. Some argue that poor countries should therefore rethink how much they spend on higher education. Indians, for example, often debate whether their government should continue to subsidise the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), its elite engineering schools, when large numbers of IIT graduates end up in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street. But a new study of remittances sent home by Ghanaian migrants suggests that on average they transfer enough over their working lives to cover the amount spent on educating them several times over. The study finds that once remittances are taken into account, the cost of education would have to be 5.6 times the official figure to make it a losing proposition for Ghana.There are more subtle ways in which the departure of some skilled people may aid poorer countries. Some emigrants would have been jobless had they stayed. Studies have found that unemployment rates among young people with college degrees in countries like Morocco and Tunisia are severalmultiples of those among the poorly educated, perhaps because graduates are more demanding. Migration may lead to a more productive pairing of people’s skills and jobs. Some of the benefits of this improved match then flow back to the migrant’s home country, most directly via remittances.The possibility of emigration may even have beneficial effects on those who choose to stay, by giving people in poor countries an incentive to invest in education. A study of Cape Verdeans finds that an increase of ten percentage points in young people’s perceived probability of emigrating raises the probability of their completing secondary school by around eight points. Another study looks at Fiji. A series of coups beginning in 1987 was seen by Fijians of Indian origin as permanently harming their prospects in the country by limiting their share of government jobs and political power. This set off a wave of emigration. Yet young Indians in Fiji became more likely to go to university even as the outlook at home dimmed, in part because Australia, Canada and New Zealand, three of the top destinations for Fijians, put more emphasis on attracting skilled migrants. Since some of those who got more education ended up staying, the skill levels of the resident Fijian population soared.Passport to richesMigrants can also affect their home country directly. In a recent book about the Indian diaspora, Devesh Kapur of the University of Pennsylvania argues that Indians in Silicon Valley helped shape the regulatory structure for India’s home-grown venture-capital industry. He also argues that these people helped Indian software companies break into the American market by vouching for their quality. Finally, migrants may return home, often with skills that would have been hard to pick up had they never gone abroad. The study of Romanian migrants found that returnees earned an average of 12-14% more than similar people who had stayed at home. Letting educated people go where they want looks like the brainy option.Articles and books referred to in this piece:“Diaspora, Democracy and Development” by Devesh Kapur, Princeton University Press, 2010“The Returns to the brain drain and brain circulation in sub-SaharanAfrica: Some computations using data from Ghana”, by Yaw Nyarko, NBER Working Paper 16813, February 2011“Testing the ‘Brain Gain’ Hypothesis: Micro Evidence from Cape Verde” by Catia Batista, Aitor Lacuesta and Pedro C. Vicente. IZA DP No. 5048, July 2010“The selection of migrants and returnees: Evidence from Romania and its implications” by J. William Ambrosini, Karin Mayr, Giovanni Peri and Dragos Radu. NBER Working Paper 16912, March 2011.“Skilled emigration and skill creation: A quasi-experiment“ by Satish Chand and Michael A.Clemens. Center for Global Development working paper.from the print edition | Finance and Economics∙Submit to reddit∙Tweet。