0113期经济学人第一篇The digital proletariat
NUC130中文手册
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编号信息列表及管脚名称定义 ................................................................................................... 12
3.1 NuMicro™ NUC130产品选型指南 ................................................................................. 12
3.2.1 NuMicro™ NUC130管脚图 ..............................................................................................13
3.3 管脚功能描述 ................................................................................................................ 16
5.5 I2C 串行接口控制器 (Master/Slave) (I2C)...................................................................... 44
5.5.1 概述.................................................................................................................................44 5.5.2 特征.................................................................................................................................45
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。
The Economics of Microfinance-chapter 1
The Economics of Microfi nanceBeatriz Armendáriz and Jonathan MorduchThe MIT PressCambridge, MassachusettsLondon, EnglandSecond Edition© 2010 Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.For information about special quantity discounts, please email special_sales@mitpress. .This book was set in Palatino by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited.Printed and bound in the United States of America.Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataArmendáriz, Beatriz.The economics of microfinance / Beatriz Armendáriz and Jonathan Morduch.—2nd ed.p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-0-262-01410-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-262-51398-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Microfinance. I. Morduch, Jonathan. II. Title.HG178.3.A76 2010332—dc22200903476010 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 11 1.1 IntroductionIn March 1978, seven years after Bangladesh won its war for indepen-dence, a small group of young men joined together to make a secret pledge. They vowed to create a new and dynamic organization dedi-cated to fi ghting rural poverty. Some saw Bangladesh’s plight as hope-less, as the country struggled in a world increasingly divided between haves and have-nots. Thirty years later, however, the organization started by the young men serves nearly six million villagers in Bangladesh and is celebrated by global business leaders. The Associa-tion for Social Advancement (now best known by its acronym, ASA) targets Bangladesh’s poorest villagers, many of them women, offering tools to create better lives. ASA found success by applying fundamen-tal lessons from economics and management, coupled with important (and not obvious) new insights. In the process, ASA is expanding fi nancial markets and creating fresh ways to think about business strat-egies, economics, and social change.1The hurdles have been high and ASA’s leaders have had to rethink their plans more than once. While ASA started with a commitment to fomenting political transformation, its course shifted radically. Today ASA is squarely a bank for the poor, headquartered in a new offi ce tower in Bangladesh’s capital. In this, ASA stands as part of a global “microfi nance” movement dedicated to expanding access to small-scale loans, savings accounts, insurance, and broader fi nancial services in poor and low-income communities. Their bet is that access to microfi -nance can offer powerful ways for the poor to unlock their productive potential by growing small businesses. Increasingly, the focus is also on helping customers save for the future and create more stable lives. InRethinking Banking2 Chapter1doing so, ASA and institutions like it are challenging decades ofthinking about markets and social policy in low-income communities.ASA’s customers borrow on average around $120 per loan, andrepay the loans over the better part of a year. Traditional commercialbanks avoid this population. First, the loans are so small that profitsare typically hard to find, and, second, lending seems risky since theborrowers are too poor to offer much in the way of collateral. But atthe end of 2008 ASA reported loan recovery rates of 99.6 percent, andtheir reported revenues have fully covered costs in every year since1993.For many observers, microfinance is nothing short of a revolution ora paradigm shift (Robinson 2001). Innovators are profi led in leadingnewspapers and business magazines (in December 2007, ASA toppedForbes magazine’s global ranking of microfinance providers), andthe 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to the microfi nance pioneersMuhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank, signals the ways in whichmicrofinance has shaken up the world of international development.One of the most striking elements is that the pioneering models grewout o f e xperiments i n l ow-income c ountries l ike B olivia a nd B angladesh—rather than from adaptations of standard banking models in richercountries.Entrepreneurs, academics, social activists, and development expertsfrom around the world have been attracted by the lessons about retailbanking through microfinance, as well as by the promise that bankslike ASA hold for getting much-needed resources to underserved pop-ulations.2 Scores of doctoral dissertations, master’s theses, and aca-demic studies have now been written on microfinance. Some focus onthe nontraditional contracts used to compensate for risks and to addressinformation problems faced by the microlenders. Others focus onmicrofinance as a way to better understand the nature of markets inlow-income economies—with possible lessons for how to supply insur-ance, water, and electricity through markets rather than throughinefficient state-owned companies. Still others focus on the ways thatmicrofinance promises to reduce poverty, fight gender inequality, andstrengthen communities. This book provides a critical guide to someof the most important new ideas.The ideas give reasons for hope. Banks and NGOs like ASA areflourishing at a time when the effectiveness of foreign aid to ease theburdens of the world’s poor faces fundamental questions (e.g., Boone1996; Easterly 2006). Governments around the world routinely faceRethinking Banking 3criticism for at times being corrupt, bloated, and uninterested in reform. Against this background, banks and NGOs like ASA offer the promise of innovative, cost-effective paths to poverty reduction and social change.ASA is not the only microlender flourishing in rural Bangladesh. ASA’s leadership could learn from the experiences of Grameen Bank and from BRAC (formerly the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Com-mittee). When we looked at the fi gures at the end of 2003, Grameen claimed 3.1 million members, BRAC claimed 3.9 million, and ASA claimed 2.3 million, nearly all of whom had been written off by com-mercial banks as being “unbankable.” Just four years later, at the end of 2007, the 3 biggest microlenders in Bangladesh claimed over 20 million customers: Grameen counted 7.4 million members, BRAC counted another 7.4 million, and ASA counted 5.4 million.3 Even accounting for the fact that people may belong to more than one micro-lending program at a time, both the absolute and relative fi gures show the potential for rapid growth and scale.The institutions anchor a movement that is global and growing. Microfinance programs have created new opportunities in contexts as diverse as villages along the Amazon, inner-city Los Angeles, the Paris outskirts, and war-ravaged Bosnia. Programs are well-established in Bolivia, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, and momentum is gaining in Mexico and India. Table 1.1 shows the results of a survey conducted by the Microcredit Summit Campaign. By the end of 2007, the campaign had reports of 154.8 million microfinance clients served worldwide by over 3,350 microfinance institutions. Of these clients, 106.6 million were reported as being in the bottom half of those living below their nation’s poverty line or were living in households earning under $1 per day per person (defined as “the poorest”; Daley-Harris 2009). Between 1997 and 2007, the numbers grew on average by about 30 percent per year, and the movement’s leaders expect continued expansion as credit unions, commercial banks, and others enter the market.Microfinance presents a series of exciting possibilities for extending markets, reducing poverty, and fostering social change. But it also presents a series of puzzles, many of which have not yet been widely discussed. One aim of this book is to describe the innovations that have created the movement. Another aim is to address and clarify the puzzles, debates, and assumptions that guide discussions but that are too often overlooked. Debates include whether the poorest are best4 Chapter 1served by loans or by better ways to save, whether subsidies are a help or a hindrance, whether providing credit without training and other complements is enough, and which aspects of lending mechanisms have driven successful performances. Many of the insights from the microfinance experience can be seen fruitfully through the lens of recent innovations in economics (especially the economics of informa-tion, contract theory, and behavioral economics). Other microfinance insights point to areas where new research is needed, especially around possibilities and constraints for saving by the poor and for estimating social impacts.Another aim of the book is to tackle the myths that have made their way into conversations on microfinance. The first myth is that microfinance is essentially about providing loans. In chapter 6 we show that providing better ways for low-income households to save and insure can be as important. But we take issue with the argument that, for the poorest, saving is more important. The second myth is that the secret to the high repayment rates on loans is tied closely to the use of the group lending contracts made famous by Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank and Bolivia’s BancoSol. (Grameen’s original approach is described in section 1.4 and in chapter 4.) Group lending has indeed been a critical innovation, but we note emerging tensions,Table 1.1Growth of microfi nance coverage as reported to the Microcredit Summit Campaign, 1997–2007End of year Total number ofinstitutionsTotal number of clients reached (millions)Number of “poorest” clients reported (millions)1997 65516.59.01998 70518.710.71999 96421.813.020001,47738.221.620012,03357.329.520022,33467.841.620032,57781.355.020042,81499.772.720053,056135.296.220063,244138.796.220073,352154.8106.6Source : Daley-Harris 2009.Rethinking Banking 5and in chapter 5 we describe a series of innovations in contracts and banking practices that go beyond group lending. We believe that the future of microfinance lies with these less-heralded innovations—including the focus on female customers (discussed in greater detail in chapter 7) and the improved management practices described in chapter 11.The third myth is that microfinance has a clear record of social impacts and has been shown to be a major tool for poverty reduction and gender empowerment. We believe that microfinance can make a real difference in the lives of those served (otherwise we would not have written this book), but microfinance is neither a panacea nor a magic bullet, and it cannot be expected to work everywhere or for everyone. Relatively few rigorous studies of impacts have been com-pleted, and the evidence on statistical impacts has been mixed so far. There is not yet a widely acclaimed study that robustly shows strong impacts, but many studies suggest the possibility. Better impact studies can help resolve debates, and we review recent results using random-ized control trials. Chapter 9 describes approaches and challenges to be confronted in pushing ahead.The final myth is that most microlenders today are both serving the poor and making profits. We show in chapters 8 and 10 that profitability has been elusive for many institutions, and we describe why good banking practices matter—and how subsidies can be deployed strategi-cally to move microfinance forward.Unlike most discussions of microfinance oriented toward practitio-ners, we do not begin by describing new microfinance institutions.4 We will have much to say about recent innovations later, but our approach begins instead with the nature of poverty and the markets and institutions that currently serve poor households. By beginning with households, communities, and markets, we develop analytical tools and insights that can then be used to think about the new institu-tions, as well as to think about directions that go beyond current approaches.1.2 Why Doesn’t Capital Naturally Flow to the Poor?From the viewpoint of basic economics, the need for microfinance is somewhat surprising. One of the first lessons in introductory econom-ics is the principle of diminishing marginal returns to capital, which says that enterprises with relatively little capital should be able to earn6 Chapter 1higher returns to their investments than enterprises with a great deal of capital. Poorer enterprises should thus be able to pay banks higher interest rates than richer enterprises. Money should flow from rich depositors to poor entrepreneurs.The “diminishing returns principle” is derived from the assumed concavity of production functions, as illustrated in figure 1.1. Concav-ity is a product of the plausible assumption that when an enterprise invests more (i.e., uses more capital), it should expect to produce more output, but each additional unit of capital will bring smaller and smaller incremental (“marginal”) gains. When a tailor buys his first $100 sewing machine, production can rise quickly relative to the output when using only a needle and thread. The next $100 investment, say for a set of electric scissors, will also bring gains, but the incremental increase is not likely to be as great as that generated by the sewing machine. After all, if buying the scissors added more to output than the sewing machine, the wise tailor would have bought the scissors first. The size of the incremental gains matter since the marginal return to capital determines the borrowers’ ability to pay.5 As figure 1.1 shows, concav-ity implies that the poor entrepreneur has a higher marginal return to capital (and thus a higher ability to repay lenders) than a richerentrepreneur.O u t p u t CapitalFigure 1.1Marginal returns to capital with a concave production function. The poorer entrepreneur has a greater return on his next unit of capital and is willing to pay higher interest rates than the richer entrepreneur.Rethinking Banking 7On a larger scale, if this basic tool of introductory economics is correct, global investors have got it all wrong. Instead of investing more money in New York, London, and Tokyo, wise investors should direct their funds toward India, Kenya, Bolivia, and other low-income countries where capital is relatively scarce. Money should move from North to South, not out of altruism but in pursuit of profit. The Nobel-winning economist Robert Lucas Jr. has measured the extent of the expected difference in returns across countries (assuming that marginal returns to capital depend just on the amount of capital relative to other productive inputs). Based on his estimates of marginal returns to capital, Lucas (1990) finds that borrowers in India should be willing to pay fifty-eight times as much for capital as borrowers in the United States. Money should thus flow from New York to New Delhi.6The logic can be pushed even further. Not only should funds move from the United States to India, but also, by the same argument, capital should naturally flow from rich to poor borrowers within any given country. Money should flow from Wall Street to Harlem and to the poor mountain communities of Appalachia, from New Delhi to villages throughout India. The principle of diminishing marginal returns says that a simple cobbler working on the streets or a woman selling flowers in a market stall should be able to offer investors higher returns than General Motors or IBM or the Tata Group can—and banks and inves-tors should respond accordingly.Lucas’s ultimate aim is to point to a puzzle: given that investors are basically prudent and self-interested, how has introductory economics got it wrong? Why are investments in fact far more likely to flow from poor to rich countries, and not in the other direction? Why do large corporations have a far easier time obtaining financing from banks than self-employed cobblers and flower sellers?The first place to start in sorting out the puzzle is with risk. Investing in Kenya, India, or Bolivia is for many a far riskier prospect than invest-ing in U.S. or European equities, especially for global investors without the time and resources to keep up-to-date on shifting local conditions. The same is true of lending to cobblers and flower sellers versus lending to large, regulated corporations. But why can’t cobblers and flower sellers in the hinterlands offer such high returns to investors that their risk is well compensated for?One school argues that poor borrowers can pay high interest rates in principle but that government-imposed interest rate restrictions prevent banks from charging the interest rates required to draw capital8 Chapter1from North to South and from cities to villages.7 If this is so, the chal-lenge for microfinance is wholly political. Advocates should just con-vince governments to remove usury laws and other restrictions onbanks, then sit back and watch the banks flood into poor regions. Thatis easier said than done of course, especially since usury laws (i.e., lawsthat put upper limits on the interest rates that lenders can charge) havelong histories and strong constituencies.Reality is both more complicated and more interesting. Even if usurylaws could be removed, providing banks with added freedom to servethe poor and cover costs is not the only answer. Indeed, as we showin chapter 2, raising interest rates can undermine institutions by weak-ening incentives for borrowers. Once (lack of) information is broughtinto the picture (together with the lack of collateral), we can more fullyexplain why lenders have such a hard time serving the poor, evenhouseholds with seemingly high returns. The important factors are thebank’s incomplete information about poor borrowers and the poorborrowers’ lack of collateral to offer as security to banks.The first problem—adverse selection—occurs when banks cannoteasily determine which customers are likely to be more risky thanothers. Banks would like to charge riskier customers more than safercustomers in order to compensate for the added probability of default.But the bank does not know who is who, and raising average interestrates for everyone often drives safer customers out of the credit market.The second problem, moral hazard, arises because banks are unable toensure that customers are making the full effort required for theirinvestment projects to be successful. Moral hazard also arises whencustomers try to abscond with the bank’s money. Both problems aremade worse by the difficulty of enforcing contracts in regions withweak judicial systems.These problems could potentially be eliminated if banks had cheapways to gather and evaluate information on their clients and to enforcecontracts. But banks typically face relatively high transactions costswhen working in poor communities since handling many small trans-actions is far more expensive than servicing one large transaction fora richer borrower. Another potential solution would be available ifborrowers had marketable assets to offer as collateral. If that were so,banks could lend without risk, knowing that problem loans werecovered by assets. But the starting point for microfinance is that newways of delivering loans are needed precisely because borrowers aretoo poor to have much in the way of marketable assets. In this sense,1.3 Good Intentions Gone Awry: The Failures of State-Owned Development BanksThe lack of banks does not mean that poor individuals are unable to borrow. They do—but from informal sources such as moneylenders, neighbors, relatives, and local traders. Such lenders often have the rich information (and effective means of enforcing contracts) that banks lack. Their resources, however, are limited. Microfinance presents itself as the latest solution to the age-old challenge of finding a way to combine the banks’ resources with the local informational and cost advantages of neighbors and moneylenders. Like traditional banks, microfinance institutions can bring in resources from outside the com-munity. Microfinance is not the first attempt to do this, but it is by far the most successful.The success of microfinance depends in part on studiously avoiding the mistakes of the past. As low-income countries attempted to develop their agricultural sectors after World War II, rural finance emerged as a large concern then too. Large state agricultural banks were given the responsibility for allocating funds, with the hope that providing sub-sidized credit would induce farmers to irrigate, apply fertilizers, and adopt new crop varieties and technologies (e.g., Reserve Bank of India 1954). The hope was to increase land productivity, increase labor demand, and thereby to increase agricultural wages.Heavy subsidies were also deployed to compensate the banks for entering into markets where they feared taking huge losses due to high transactions costs and inherent risks. The subsidies were also used to keep interest rates low for poor borrowers. In the Philippines, for example, interest rates charged to borrowers were capped at 16 percent before a reform in 1981, while inflation rates were around 20 percent annually (David 1984). The negative real interest rates created excess demand for loans, adding pressure to allocate loans to politically favored residents, rather than to target groups. Meanwhile, the interest rates offered to rural depositors were only about 6 percent per year, so inflation eroded the purchasing power of savings at a rate of about 14 percent per year. Not surprisingly, such policies turnedout disastrously. David (1984, 222) concludes that in the PhilippinesIndia’s Integrated Rural Development Program (IRDP) is, to many, a too perfect example of inefficient subsidized credit. The program allocated credit according to “social targets” that in principle pushed 30 percent of loans toward socially excluded groups (as signified by being a member of a “scheduled” tribe or caste) and 30 percent toward women. Achieving social goals became as important as achieving efficiency. Under the system, capital was allocated according to a series of nested planning exercises, with village plans aggregating to block plans aggregating to district plans aggregating to state plans. Subsidies between 1979 and 1989, a period of rapid IRDP growth, amounted to $6 billion (roughly 25 percent to 50 percent of loan volume made to weak sectors). Those resources did not generate good institutional performance. According to Pulley (1989), IRDP repayment rates fell below 60 percent, and just 11 percent of borrowers took out a second loan after the first (which is particularly striking given the importance accorded to repeat lending by microfinance practitioners). In 2000, the IRDP loan recovery rate fell to just 31 percent (Meyer 2002).10 As insti-tutional performance dramatically weakened, the IRDP failed to be a reliable and meaningful source of services for the poor.In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Rural Finance Program at Ohio State University launched a devastating critique of government-led development banks like the IRDP and the Philippine programs.11 Its starting point was that credit is not like fertilizer or seeds. Instead, Ohio School critics argued, credit should be thought of as a fungible tool of financial intermediation (with many uses) and not as a specific input into particular production processes. Thus one problem, according to such criticisms, came from mistakenly believing that credit could be “directed” to particular ends favored by policymakers (e.g., expanding the use of high-yielding crop varieties). And that, coupled with cheap credit policies, created havoc in rural financial markets and ultimately undermined attempts to reduce poverty (Adams, Graham, and von Pischke 1984). The story hinges on a failure to adequately account forthe incentive effects and politics associated with subsidies. SubsidizingThus, critics of the subsidized state banks argue that poor house-holds would often have been better off without the subsidies. This is in part because, first, subsidized banks pushed out informal credit sup-pliers on which the poor rely. Second, the market rate of interest is a rationing mechanism—those who are willing to pay for credit are only those with projects that are most worthy. But with subsidies driving interest rates well below market rates of interest, the rationing mecha-nism broke down. Credit was no longer allocated to the most produc-tive recipients, but instead was often allocated on the basis of politics or social concerns. Good projects thus went unfunded. Third, bankers’ incentives to collect savings deposits were diminished by the steady flow of capital from the government, so poor households were left with relatively unattractive and inefficient ways to save. Fourth, the fact that the banks were state banks led to pressure to forgive loans just before elections, to privilege the powerful with access to cheap funds meant for the poor, and to remove incentives for management to build tight, efficient institutions. Braverman and Guasch (1986) conclude that gov-ernment credit programs in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia have, with a few exceptions, ended up with default rates between 40 percent and 95 percent. And at such rates, borrowers can be excused for seeing the credit programs as pro-viding grants rather than loans. The misallocation of resources hap-pened so regularly that González-Vega (1984) dubs it the “iron law of interest rate restrictions.”Critics hold that these kinds of subsidies undermined the poor, although the evidence from India at least provides a more nuanced picture. Empirical work by Burgess and Pande (2005), for example, shows net positive average impacts on the poor in India.12 Similarly, Binswanger and Khandker (1995) find that between 1972–1973 and 1980–1981 the state banks in India increased nonfarm growth, employ-ment, and rural wages. Still, the Indian programs have been clearly inefficient, and a great deal of money that was originally targeted to the poor ended up being wasted or going into the “wrong” hands. As a result, Binswanger and Khandker find only modest impacts on agri-cultural output and none on agricultural employment, and they con-clude that the costs of the government programs were so high that they nearly swamped the economic benefits. More than any positive histori-cal precedent, it is the repudiation of these negative legacies that has1.4 Grameen Bank and the Beginnings of MicrofinanceThe roots of microfinance can be found in many places, but the best-known story is that of Muhammad Yunus and the founding of Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank. We briefly tell the story now and return to Grameen’s experience in later chapters.13In the middle of the 1970s, Bangladesh was starting down the long road to build a new nation. The challenges were great: independence from Pakistan had been won in December 1971 after a fierce war, and two years later widespread flooding brought on a famine that killed tens of thousands (Sen 1981). Government surveys found over 80 percent of the population living in poverty in 1973–1974 (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics 1992).Muhammad Yunus, an economist trained at Vanderbilt University, was teaching at Chittagong University in southeast Bangladesh. The famine, though, brought him disillusionment with his career as an economics professor. In 1976, Yunus started a series of experiments lending to poor households in the nearby village of Jobra. Even the little money he could lend from his own pocket was enough for villag-ers to run simple business activities like rice husking and bamboo weaving. Yunus found that borrowers were not only profiting greatly by access to the loans but that they were also repaying reliably, even though the villagers could offer no collateral. Realizing that he could only go so far with his own resources, in 1976 Yunus convinced the Bangladesh Bank (the central bank of Bangladesh) to help him set up a special branch that catered to the poor of Jobra. That soon spawned another trial project, this time in Tangail in North-Central Bangladesh. Assured that the successes were not region-specific flukes, Grameen went nation-wide. One innovation that allowed Grameen to grow explosively was group lending, a mechanism that essentially allows the poor borrowers to act as guarantors for each other. With group lending in place, the bank could quickly grow village by village as funding permitted. And funding—supplied in the early years by the International Fund for Agriculture and Development, the Ford Foun-dation, and the governments of Bangladesh, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands—permitted rapid growth indeed. As figure 1.2 shows, thebank grew by 40 percent per year at its peak. By 1991 the Grameen。
2013版《经济学人》中英文对照：网络净收益
Free exchange自在交流Net benefits网络净支利How to quantify the gains that the internet has broughtto consumers若何量化互联网给用户带去的支利?Mar 9th 2013 |From the print editionWHEN her two-year-old daughter was diagnosed with cancer in1992, Judy Mollica spent hours in a nearby medical library in southFlorida, combing through journals for information about her child’scondition. Upon seeing an unfamiliar term she would stop and huntdown its meaning elsewhere in the library. It was, she says, like“walking in the dark”. Her daughter recovered but in 2005 wasdiagnosed with a different form of cancer. This time, Ms Mollicawas able to stay by her side. She could read articles online,instantly look up medical and scientific terms on Wikipedia, andthen follow footnotes to new sources. She could converse with herdaughter’s specialists like a fellow doctor. Wikipedia, she says,not only saved her time but gave her a greater sense of control.“You can’t put a price on that.”1992年茱迪•莫莉卡(JudyMollica)两岁年日的女女被诊续入得了癌症，她正在北佛罗中达州一家开医院没有远的医教图书馆中破钞了年日量的时间详实天查阅医教期刊体味女女的病情。
2.1Output, the stock market and interest rate
American Economic AssociationOutput, the Stock Market, and Interest RatesAuthor(s): Olivier J. BlanchardSource: The American Economic Review, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Mar., 1981), pp. 132-143Published by: American Economic AssociationStable URL: /stable/1805045Accessed: 28/01/2010 09:24Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aea.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@.American Economic Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheAmerican Economic Review.。
Social and Cultural Environments
寬頻
• 擁有很大的容量，能同時傳輸多個聲音、資 料及影像頻道 • 頻寬大小可決定通過某一傳輸管道的頻率 範圍
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寬頻
• • • • • 讓使用者可以接收音頻、影像及媒體 線上遊戲 線上教學 醫學診斷及治療 電子商務
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©2011 Pearson Education Taiwan
網站與設計
• 公司網站可自製也可外包 • 註冊特定國家的網域名稱 • 將網站的語言當地化，同時依照當地的國情 為公司命名 • 每個特定國家的網站都應反映當地文化、習 俗與審美觀 • 隱私議題：歐盟是全球法規最嚴格的地區， 其對隱私權的標準現在也被加拿大、澳洲和 亞洲等其他地區採用
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©2011 Pearson Education Taiwan
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©2011 Pearson Education Taiwan
產業輻合
輻合(convergence) 代表結合之前各自獨 立的產業與產品類別
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©2011 Pearson Education Taiwan
價值網路與突破性科技
• 創新者的兩難 (innovator's dilemma) • 價值網絡(value network) • 持續性技術(sustaining technology) • 突破性技術(disruptive technology)
• 網站也可依用途來分類：
– 消費者促銷活動vs.經銷商促銷活動推廣商品或服務 的促銷網站 – 提供新聞、娛樂，並支援公司公共關係的內容網站 – 讓消費者進行購買商品與服務的交易網站
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©2011 Pearson Education Taiwan来自網站類別15-13
数字阅读取代传统阅读英语作文
数字阅读取代传统阅读英语作文The Evolution of Reading: Digital vs. Traditional.As technology marches forward, so does the way we consume information. The debate surrounding the replacement of traditional reading by digital reading has been raging for years, with proponents and opponents voicing their opinions passionately. This essay aims to explore both sides of the argument and delve into the implications of this shift in reading habits.The Rise of Digital Reading.The advent of the internet and subsequent digital revolution has been transformative in every aspect of human life, including reading. Digital reading, often referred to as e-reading, has seen exponential growth in recent years, with devices like smartphones, tablets, and e-readers becoming commonplace. This shift has been driven by several factors, including convenience, accessibility, and theever-growing library of digital content.Convenience is perhaps the most significant driver. With digital reading, users can access books, articles, and other forms of content anytime, anywhere, without the need for physical books or newspapers. This flexibility has made digital reading particularly popular among younger generations who are accustomed to the instant gratification of digital technology.Accessibility is another key factor. Digital content is often cheaper or even free, as compared to physical books, and it跨越了地理和文化的界限。
赏析版2011年1-3月经济学人文章(英汉双语对照)汇集
[2011.03.31]They’re bust. Admit it. 他们破产了，接受这个现实吧！ 1
[2011.03.31]Everybody needs good neighbours给力莫如好邻居 3
[2011.03.31]Raging bulls 愤怒的“公牛” 9
[2011.02.17]New world order 新世界秩序 148
[2011.02.17]Learning to like inflation 学会喜欢通胀 149
[2011.02.10]Shifting sands 流沙 153
[2011.02.10]The anti-Nokia 诺基亚的反例 156
[2011.03.17]Stopped in their tracks 网络追踪，戛然而止 53
[2011.03.17]Japan and the uses of adversity日本之灾,焉知非福? 55
[2011.03.12]Oh, Mr Porter - 哦，波特先生 58
[2011.03.11]Regional disparities 地区差距 62
[2011.01.20]The world's water-coolers 世界的开水间 185
[2011.01.20]The world's water-coolers 世界的开水间 189
[2011.01.20]Tribes still matter 族群依旧重要 194
[2011.01.20]Canada's tar sands 加拿大的油砂 198
Portugal’s prime minister resigned on March 23rd after failing to win support for the fourth austerity package in a year. The country’s credit rating was slashed to near-junk status on March 29th, while ten-year bond yields have risen above 8% as investors fear Portugal will have to turn to the European Union and the IMF for loans. The economies of both Greece and Ireland, Europe’s two “rescued” countries, are shrinking faster than expected, and bond yields, at almost 13% for Greece and over 10% for Ireland, remain stubbornly high. Investors plainly don’t believe the rescues will work.
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Free exchange自由交易The digital proletariat数字无产阶级（无产阶级，不占有生产资料的阶级，这里意思我们产生数据，却无偿的交由互联网公司使用）导读：Economists propose a radical solution to the problems posed byartificial intelligence经济学家提出了一个彻底解决人工智能相关问题的方法。
正文：YOUhave multiple jobs, whetheryouknowitornot.不管你有没有意识到，你身上都有多种生意。
Most begin first thing in the morning, when you pick up your phoneand begin generatingthe data thatmake up Silicon Valley’smost importantresource.大多数生意在早晨开始，你拿起手机时就开始产生了数据。
这些数据组成了硅谷最重要的资源That, atleast, ishowwe oughtto think aboutthe role ofdata-creation in the economy, according to a fascinating new economics paper.至少，这就是我们应该思考的：数据创造在经济里扮演怎样的角色，这是根据一篇很有吸引力的新经济文章提到的。
We are all digital labourers, helpingmake possible the fortunes generated by firms like Google andFacebook, the authors argue. 其中作者认为，我们就是所有数字的劳工，帮助像谷歌和脸书这样的公司创造财富。
（fortunes命运，幸运，富有）Ifthe economy is to function properlyin the future—and ifa crisisoftechnological unemployment isto be avoided—we musttake accountofthis, and change the relationship between biginternetcompaniesand theirusers.在未来经济运转良好的情况下，如果想要避免工业发展带来的失业危机，我们必须着眼于这件事情，并且改变大型互联网公司和他们用户之间的关系。
Artificial intelligence (AI) is getting better all the time, and stands poised totransform a host of industries, say the authors 作者说，人工智能势头一直越来越好，势必（准备）改变一大批工业。
But, in orderto learn to drive a carorrecognize a face, the algorithmsthatmake clever machines tick（滴答，拟声词，表示机器运作）mustusuallybe trained on massive amountsofdata. 但是，为了做到自动驾驶和人脸识别（主语是AI），使智能机器运作的法则必须经常用非常大量的数据进行测试。
Internetfirms gather these data from users every time they click on aGoogle search result, say, orissue a command to Alexa.互联网公司在用户每次进行谷歌搜索，发表言论，或者指挥Alexa（亚马逊的公司，理解为互联网公司吧）的时候可以获得这些数据。
valuable data from users through the use oftools likereCAPTCHA, which ask visitors to solve problems that are easyforhumansbuthard forAIs, such asdecipheringtextfrom books that machines are unable to parse.他们也通过用户使用像reCAPTCHA珍贵数据。
这种验证码对访问者提出像辨认一些书中的文本的问题，这类问题对人们很简单，但是对AI来很难。
这些书是机器所无法解读的。
（考研出题：请问ho over up与下列哪个选项意思最为接近。
注意：这种题不是问你ho over up的意思，你也不可能知道，这种题是要你对上下文的理解来作答）That does not just screen outmalicious bots, but also helps digitise books.这不仅仅是筛选出恶意的僵尸程序(编者想了好久各种百度终于理解了，这是僵尸粉的意思)，而且还帮助书籍数字化。
People “pay”foruseful free servicesbyprovidingfirmswith the data they crave.人们为好用的免费服务“付费”，因为这提供给了那些公司渴望的用户数据。
（考研出题：为什么说“pay”。
注意介词代表的因果关系）These data become part of the firms’capital, and, as such, a fearsome source of competitive advantage.这些数据变成了公司资本的一部分，甚至成为可怕的竞争优势资源Would-be startupsthat might challenge internet giants cannot train their AIs withoutaccessto the data onlythose giantspossess.潜在的初创公司没有这些数据的享用权就可能无法培养他们的人工智能。
这些数据只有那些互联网巨头拥有。
（划出主干，一目了然）Their besthope isoften to be acquired bythose verysame titans, addingto the problem ofuncompetitive markets.这些公司最期盼的数据常常被那些巨头们所获取，这就导致了市场缺乏竞争力的问题。
（如果要出题，一定是从adding to 后面出题，这就告诉我们阅读文章时要注意高信息的句子和短语）That, for now, AI’s contributions to productivity growth are small, the authors say, is partly because of the free-data model, which limitsthe qualityofdata gathered.作者还说，现在人工智能对生产力发展的贡献还很小，一部分是因为免费数据的模型。
它们限制了获取数据的质量。
Firmstrying to developuseful applications for AI must hope thatthe data they have aresufficient, or come up with ways to coax users into providingthem with betterinformation atno cost.想要为AI发展有用应用程序的公司肯定希望他们拥有的数据是高效的，或者肯定想方设法吸引用户免费的为他们提供更好的数据信息。
（coax哄。
像这种生僻词汇，但是在语境里很生动形象的词语，出题人非常喜欢作为词汇题来考，你不需要知道它的意思，你也不可能知道除非你英语八级都过了，但是你可以从上下文来推理理解它的意思，这也是出题人对你阅读能力的考验）Forexample, they mustpester random people—like those blur-deciphering visitors towebsites—into labelling data,mistakes.比方说，他们必须给随机的人打上数据标签（pester管束，纠缠），像那些网站模糊的访问者们。
并且希望不要在烦恼和匆忙之中犯错误。
Even so, asAIimproves, the amountofworkmade vulnerableto displacementbytechnologygrows, and evermore ofthe valuegenerated in the economyaccruesto profitable firmsrather thanworkers.即便如此，随着AI的发展，科技的进步，大量工作变得可被替代，甚至对于那些盈利公司，经济发展中越来越多的价值被AI而不是工人们创造。
As the authors point out, the share of GDP paid out to workersin wagesand salaries—once thoughtto be relatively stable—hasalreadybeen decliningoverthe pastfewdecades.就像作者指出的那样，工资薪水支出所占的GDP的比重（曾经被认为是相对稳定的）在过去几十年一直在下滑。
To tackle these problems, theyhave a radical proposal.为了解决这些问题，他们想出了一个彻底的方法。
（编者注：老子翻译了这么久你才开始讲主题？！！！）Ratherthan beingregarded ascapital, data should be treated as labour—and, more specifically, regarded asthe propertyofthose who generate such information, unlesstheyagree to provide it to firmsinexchange for payment.应该把数据当作劳动力而非资本----并且，更具体的来说，当作是那些产生了这样数据信息的人的财产，除非他们同意提供给公司并以此交换报酬。
（Rather than=no ,rather=not)In such a world, user data might be soldmultiple times, to multiple firms, reducing the extent to whichdata setsserve asbarriersto entry.如今的世界，用户数据可能已经被卖给很多公司很多次了，用户数据减少了数据集作为入场障碍的程度。