【英语生活】英国的日子不好过

Any British citizen who bases his or her vote in the forthcoming general election on the “flash” official national income figures showing that output rose by 0.1 per cent in the final quarter of 2009 ought to be disenfranchised. These initial estimates are not exact enough even to say where in a range of plus or minus 1 per cent the change occurred. Later revisions – which go on for years after the period in question – could be in either direction. Our hypothetical citizen ought to be doubly disenfranchised if the intended vote is changed by similar decimal percentage point movement in the estimate for the first quarter of 2010 due a few weeks before the most likely date of the general election, May 6.

The fact is that estimates of real gross domestic product are not nearly accurate enough to measure fine changes. All that one can reasonably say is that output was roughly stable in the last quarter after having fallen by perhaps 5 per cent in the year as a whole. Even that is an optimistic assessment of what can be known. Ideally, one should take a moving average of several quarters, assuming that the direction of bias in the reporting has not changed radically. Taking everything into account, including recent surveys and other data, it looks as if the UK economy has stopped contracting.

Does that mean the recession is over? Yes, if you choose to define a recession in terms of falling output and keep your fingers crossed against the possibility of a double dip. But that gives us little insight. What surely matters is the gap between actual output and the trend consistent with non-inflationary growth. You may think that that is like looking for a black cat in a dark room; and in future articles I shall suggest a slightly different approach. Meanwhile, however, the Goldman Sachs UK Economics Analyst makes a heroic attempt to limit the range of argument.

It first assumes that output was on trend in 2005 and that potential output has been growing at an annual rate of 2.6 per cent – a little below the long-term average. On that basis the “output gap” is in excess of 10 per cent. At the other extreme, a statistical method (known to its friends as Hodrick-Prescott filter), based on smoothing out past cyclical fluctuations suggests an output gap of “only” 3 per cent. You can find respectable estimates for all stations in-between. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, for instance, has a figure of 6½ per cent. Goldman Sachs itself looks at separate estimates of labour and capital growth to yield a gap of 5 per cent, which is similar to the British Treasury's own view.

Looking ahead, Goldman Sachs believes that the output gap is likely to contract – if it is not doing so already. Its starting point is that unemployment has been some 2½ percentage points lower than would be expected on the basis of past relationships with GDP. A popular explanation is that this reflects labour hoarding, in contrast to the US where unemployment has risen much more. One implication of the labour hoarding view is that in the absence of an unexpectedly rapid recovery there are many more job losses in the pipeline. An alternative explanation is that the surprisingly small rise in unemployment already reflects the adverse effects of the credit crunch on physical investment, which fell by an astonishing 14 per cent in 2009. The fact that inflation has been slightly surprising on the upside reinforces the view that spare capacity has been declining.

This may be benign from a short-term point of view, but it suggests that the scope for a long-term improvement in employment is very much less than might have been thought. Indeed, Barclays economists suggest that the sustainable rate of unemployment (sometimes known as the Nairu) will rise from 6 to 9 per cent. Actual unemployment is now 7.9 per cent, suggesting that it has to rise further in the medium term. They also suggest, for good measure, that underlying growth rate of the economy is now an annual 1¾ per cent, compared with the Treasury's assumed 2¾ per cent. This seemingly small difference becomes of great importance projected ahead.

Those economists who emphasise these physical constraints tend to believe that demand may now grow faster than potential supply, and that policy should and will become less accommodative from here. Economists with a more monetary bias, however, are worried by the sluggish growth in some measures of the money supply and bank credit. They are obviously represented inside the Bank of England, whose statement this Thursday can be paraphrased as saying in Fed parlance: “Steady as she goes with a bias towards easing.” My own view is that there is little case for action just yet. But the cat may jump in either direction. (Whoever said that macroeconomics was an exact science?) In any case, I would base policy on the state of the economy – real growth and inflation – rather than on a narrow view of the government's own finances, and avoid like the plague the draconian spending cuts and tax increases set out as “options” by the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

在即将到来的英国大选中，任何根据“耀眼的”官方国民收入数据——去年第四季度增长0.1%——来投票的英国公民都应当被剥夺选举权。这些初步估计数据毫无精确性可言，甚至说不出变动是在正负1%之间的哪一点。随后的修正——在所讨论期间过后会持续数年——可能是增，也可能是减。如果因为定于大选前数周公布的2010年第一季度估计数据出现同样不到一个百分点的变动而改变投票意向，我们假象中的公民就应当被双重剥夺选举权。英国大选很可能在5月6日举行。

事实上，实际国内生产总值(GDP)估计数据毫不精确，根本无法衡量细微的变化。唯一合理的说法是，在全年产出下降可能达5%之后，上季度产出基本保持稳定。就连这也是对所有可知信息的乐观评估。在理想状态下，假定报告中的偏差趋向并未发生根本改变，人们应取数个季度的移动平均值。如果将所有因素都纳入考虑范围，包括最近的调查和其它数据，看上去英国经济似乎已停止了收缩。

这意味着危机已经过去了吗？是的，如果你是用产出下降来定义衰退，并祈祷不要出现双底型衰退。但那对我们没有什么启发。真正要紧的是实际产出和与非通胀增长一致的趋势产出之间的缺口。你或许认为，这就像在黑屋子里找黑猫；在以后的文章中，我会提出一种略有不同的方法。但与此同时，《高盛英国经济分析师》(Goldman Sachs UK Economics Analyst)进行了一次勇敢的尝试，试图限定论证的范围。

它首先假设，2005年的产出与趋势一致，此后，潜在产出一直以每年2.6%的速度增长——略低于长期均值。基于此，“产出缺口”在10%以上。在另一个极端，一种基于消除以往周期性波动的统计方法（被拥护者们称作霍德里克-普雷斯科特过滤器(Hodrick—Prescott Filter)）显示，产出缺口“仅”为3%。你在两者之间的各个点，都能找到值得重视的估计数据。例如，经济合作与发展组织(OECD)的估值为6.5%。高盛根据各项劳动力和资本增长数据得出的缺口为5%，与英国财政部自身的看法相似。

展望未来，高盛认为产出缺口可能会收窄——如果不是已经在收窄的话。其论证的基础是，如果根据过去与GDP的关系来计算，失业率本来会再高出2.5个百分点左右。一种流行的解释是，这反映了英国劳动力的囤积，与失业率增幅更高的美国相反。劳动力囤积观点的一个含义是：如果经济没有出现意料之外的快速复苏，未来会有更多人失业。另一种解释是：失业率增幅低得出人意料，已经反映出信贷危机对实体投资的负面作用——2009年实体投资的降幅达到令人震惊的14%。通胀一直呈上升趋势，这有些令人吃惊，也增强了闲置产能在不断减少的观点。

从短期来看，这或许是有利的，但也意味着，就业情况长期改善的空间比人们想象的要小得多。实际上，巴克莱(Barclays)的经济学家表示，可持续的失业率（有时被称为Nairu，即非加速通货膨胀失业率）将从6%升至9%。目前的实际失业率为7.9%，预示着中期内还将进一步上升。此外，他们还提出，目前英国经济的潜在年增长率为1.75%，低于财政部估计的2.75%。这一看似微小的差异在进行预期时会变得至关重要。

看重这些具体限制因素的经济学家往往相信，目前需求的增长可能快于潜在供给，从现在起，政策应该（也将）变得不那么宽松。不过，更看重货币因素的经济学家担心的是，根据某些标准衡量，货币供应和银行信贷如今增长缓慢。英国央行(BoE)显然是他们的代表。英国央行上周四发布的声明用美联储(Fed)的腔调来表示就是：“目前表现平稳，倾向于放松。”我自己的看法是，目前还没有什么行动的理由。但两个方向都有可能（究竟是谁说宏观经济学是一门精密科学的？）无论是哪种情况，我都会根据经济状况——实际增长和通胀——来制定政策，而非基于对政府自身财政状况的狭隘认识，同时竭力避免伦敦财政研究所(Institute for Fiscal Studies)列为“选项”的大幅削减支出和增税。

译者/陈云飞