【英语国际】美国为9.11付出的代价

When the planes hit the twin towers eight years ago this week, I wasn't a journalist at all, but a business economist living in London. It was my job to look at what was happening to the economy and figure out what it might imply and what might happen next. Alongside the shock experienced by anyone watching the television coverage, I felt bewilderment. It seemed that the sheer physical destruction and the deaths of so many highly skilled people would have to disrupt the running of the US economy – one of Osama bin Laden's declared objectives. But with no close precedents, it was hard to say by how much.

Early estimates suggested that the economic cost alone might be grievous. The International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook, published three months after the attacks, thought that losses to the US economy could total $75bn. Others thought the economic damage would be greater. Robert E. Looney, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, estimated in 2002 that direct costs exceeded $27bn but the effect of the disruption might total $500bn. A study by the New York City Comptroller's Office estimated that the city alone would lose a cumulative $58bn between 2001 and 2004 as a result of the attacks.

Some attempts to untangle the question were ingenious. Alberto Abadie of Harvard and Sofia Dermisi of Roosevelt University looked not at New York but at Chicago to estimate one consequence of the attacks. Chicago, after all, suffered no damage and enjoyed no reconstruction boom. But as the home of the Sears Tower, the tallest building in the US, Chicago might have suffered a psychological blow as a possible target for a future attack. Sure enough, vacancy rates in and near the Sears Tower and two other famous Chicago skyscrapers rose sharply relative to rates elsewhere in the city.

With the luxury of hindsight, a new issue of Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy attempts to work out the economic impact of the September 11 attacks, publishing a range of studies that approach the problem from two directions. One approach is to look at the entire economy and try to figure out what damage was done by the attacks – no easy task given the fact that the dotcom bubble had been deflating and the economy was entering recession at about the time the terrorists struck. The other approach is narrower, looking at – for example – the impact on New York City rents and wages.

Both approaches struggle to deal with the echoes of the attack. Air travel suffered, for instance, but teleconferencing, holidays at home and road transport might well have prospered. Then there is the problem of the policy response: President Bush quickly pledged $20bn to rebuild New York City. That reconstruction spending would act as a counterweight to the attack. No wonder the journal's editors write of “unscrambling the eggs”.

Reading the full range of studies, I have concluded that the direct physical effects of such a horrific attack had been smaller than most people expected. Perhaps $25bn of buildings were destroyed; the lifetime wages of the victims would have been about $10bn, which is a crude way of calculating the narrow economic impact of a mass murder. But beyond that, there seem to have been few immediate economic consequences for New York City. The additional costs to the country as a whole were largely psychological: job losses because of a loss of confidence, for instance. There is a reason such acts are called terrorism.

The polity of the US was placed under severe strain by al-Qaeda's attack. Its economy was more resilient than most observers expected.

8年前，当飞机撞上双子塔的时候，我还压根儿不是新闻工作者，而是一名住在伦敦的商业经济学家。我的工作是观察各种经济事件，搞清楚其中可能的含意，以及接下来可能会发生什么。除了每一个收看电视报道的人都有的震惊，我还感到了困惑。纯粹的物质破坏和这么多高技能人才丧生，似乎必然会扰乱美国经济的正常运行——这也是奥萨马•本•拉登(Osama bin Laden)所宣扬的目的之一。但由于近年来尚无先例，很难判断其影响程度。

早期的估计数字显示，人们认为光是经济损失可能就相当严重。国际货币基金组织(IMF)在袭击事件发生3个月后发布的《世界经济展望》(World Economic Outlook)认为，美国经济蒙受的损失总计可能达到750亿美元。也有人认为经济损失会更高。美国海军研究生院(Naval Postgraduate School)教授罗伯特• E•卢尼(Robert E. Looney) 2002年估计，直接损失超过270亿美元，但破坏造成的影响可能总计达5000亿美元。纽约市审计署(New York City Comptroller's Office)进行的一项研究估计，2001年至2004年间，仅纽约市就会因袭击造成580亿美元的损失。

一些解决问题的尝试可谓独辟蹊径。哈佛大学(Harvard)教授阿尔波特•阿拜迪(Alberto Abadie)和罗斯福大学(Roosevelt University)的索菲亚•德米西(Sofia Dermisi)在估计袭击的一个后果时，将目光放在了芝加哥，而非纽约。毕竟，芝加哥并未遭破坏，也没有享受到重建的繁荣。但作为全美最高建筑西尔斯大厦(Sears Tower)的所在地，芝加哥或许受到了精神打击：它有可能成为下一个袭击目标。果不其然，与市内其它地区相比，西尔斯大厦与芝加哥另外两幢著名的摩天大楼及其周边建筑的空置率出现了大幅攀升。

带着后见之明的优势，最新一期《和平经济学、和平科学和国家政策》(Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy)发表了一系列研究报告，通过两条途径来分析问题，试图计算出9.11事件的经济影响。一条途径是观察整个经济，试着弄清楚袭击造成的损失——鉴于在恐怖袭击发生前后，互联网泡沫已经开始破灭，美国经济正步入衰退，这并非易事。另一种方法则更加狭义一些，比方说，观察的是纽约房租和薪酬受到的影响。

两种方式都很难透彻分析袭击引起的连锁反应。例如，航空业蒙受了损失，但电话会议、国内旅游和公路交通可能得到了繁荣发展。此外还有政策回应的问题：美国总统布什(Bush)迅速承诺拨款200亿美元重建纽约市。这笔重建支将起到抵消袭击影响的作用，难怪该杂志的编辑们将其形容为“收覆水”。

读完所有的报告后，我得出的结论是，这样一次恐怖袭击的直接物质影响比多数人的预期要小。大约有价值250亿美元的建筑物被毁；遇难者的终身薪资大约是100亿美元——这是计算大屠杀狭义经济影响的一种粗略方法。但除此之外，似乎纽约市几乎没受到什么直接经济影响。整个国家蒙受的额外损失主要是心理上的：例如，信心丧失导致的失业。将这种行为称作恐怖主义是有理由的。

基地组织(al-Qaeda)的袭击让美国政体承受了巨大压力。其经济则要比大多数观察人士所预期的更有弹性。

译者/陈云飞