【英语生活】换房交易更合理？

One of the first lessons I learnt in Econ101 was that barter trade is inefficient compared with a money economy. Yet, in an interesting article in the FT's House & Home section (“Fair Trade”, May 16 2009) I read about the rising popularity of websites through which people can swap houses, instead of buying and selling them. Is this another example of how useful my economics degree is?
Confused Economist

Dear Confused,

Up to a point. Your degree probably did not contain much behavioural economics, and that would have been helpful to understand half of the story. People tend to form strong views about what a fair price is for a house, and behavioural economists call this “anchoring”.

Anchoring can take extreme forms. Experimental subjects have been known to be influenced by contemplating the last two digits of their national insurance number or other obviously random numbers. More commonly, people fixate on what some estate agent told them was their home's value at the peak of the market. When the market weakens, prices do not so much fall as evaporate, as sellers cling on to the hope of a price that buyers are not willing to pay.

Under the circumstances it should not be surprising that barter has become more common. Neither seller needs to acknowledge that his precious house has become less valuable; they simply recognise the fact that their homes are of similar value and get on with the trade.

Still, the practice is not entirely the product of a psychological quirk. In a market as thin as this one, selling a house and buying another one is a big financial risk. Prices can move a long way before the two trades are finalised, and so swapping hedges both parties against that risk. Your degree has a little life left in it yet.

我在初级经济学的头几堂课中就学到：易货交易比货币经济效率低。但我在英国《金融时报》住房与家居版(House & Home)看到了一篇有趣的文章（2009年5月16日发表的《公平交易》(Fair Trade)）。该文写到，有一类网站正愈发受到大众的欢迎：人们可通过这种网站来交换房子，而非买卖。这是否再次说明，我的经济学学位没多大用？

感到困惑的经济学家

亲爱的“困惑”先生，

从某种程度上讲，你说的没错。你所学的内容大概不包括太多的行为经济学知识，而这些知识本有助于你理解这件事。人们往往会对一幢房子的公平价格形成根深蒂固的看法，行为经济学家称之为“锚定”(Anchoring)。

锚定可以极端的形式出现。人们已经知道，实验对象会受到自己国家保险号码的最后两位数或其它明显随机数字的影响。更为常见的是，人们会对某位房产经纪人在房市见顶时给他们房子报的估价念念不忘。当房市走弱时，房价并不会急速下降，因为卖家死抱着高房价的念头不放，而买家却不愿为此掏腰包。

在这种情况下，易货交易愈发常见就不足为奇了。换房的双方均无需承认其宝贵的房子已经不那么值钱了；他们只需承认各自房子的价值差不多，然后继续完成交易。

不过，这种做法并不完全是心理怪癖的结果。在像如今这般交投清淡的房市中，卖出一幢房子再买入另一座房子存在很大的资金风险。在两笔交易完成之前，房价可能会出现大幅波动。因此，换房行为令交易双方都规避了这种风险。从这点来看，你所学的知识没有多大用处。

译者/汪洋