【朝花夕拾】-- 【经济学人】每日打卡

Natural Talent

摘自【经济学人】    March, 2019

翻译：青澄青果

【朝花夕拾】-- 【经济学人】每日打卡

Few economists can claim either to have successfully challenged the bedrock beliefs of their field or to have altered how governments pursue policies that affect millions. Alan Krueger, who died on March 16th, managed both.

很少有经济学家可以做到既撼动专业领域的基本理念，同时又改变政府的决策思路，因而也影响了成千上万的民众。克鲁格，一位经济学家，他已经于3月16日不幸去世，却同时做到了以上两点。

【朝花夕拾】-- 【经济学人】每日打卡

In research with David Card in the early 1990s, Mr Krueger showed, through careful data analysis, that increases in the minimum wage did not lead to reductions in employment, as standard models suggested they should.

上世纪90年代早期，克鲁格在和另一位经济学家卡德的合作研究中，通过严谨的数据分析发现，与标准模型恰恰相反，增加最低工资并不会减少就业机会。

【朝花夕拾】-- 【经济学人】每日打卡

The research, which the author summarized in a seminal book, "Myth and Measurement", published in 1995, drew a scathing initial response. Critics assaulted their motivations, data and analysis until allowing, finally, that the pair had a point.

在1995年出版的【迷思与计量】一书中，两位经济学家总结了这一研究成果，该书乍一出版就引来尖锐的批评，然而却对该领域产生了深远的影响。批评家抨击了他们研究的动机、所引用的数据和分析方法，然而最终他们还是承认了两位经济学家的见地有一定的道理。

Economics badly lagged behind medicine and the physical sciences in the use of careful empirical work, not least because of the difficulty of running experiments on messy real-world interactions.

经济学在严谨的实证研究方法的运用上已经远远落后于医药学和物理学，主要由于经济学要针对纷繁复杂的现实世界中的互动开展实验，其难度可想而知。

【朝花夕拾】-- 【经济学人】每日打卡

In the late 1980s, however, some economists were honing methods to study "natural experiments", in which a more or less random, localised event allowed researchers to compare the experiences of affected and and unaffected groups, in something of the way that a laboratory scientist might compare treatment and control groups.

上世纪80年代晚期，一些经济学家开始推敲“自然实验”方法的运用，在实验中，针对或多或少随机发生的小范围事件，研究人员可以对比受影响的群体和不受影响的群体的不同体验，正如科学家对比其治疗组和对照观察组不同的实验数据一样。

Mr Krueger's papers explored how factors from education to race to technology influenced workers' prospects, often rustling up new data sources in the process. He drew a link between America's opioid-addiction crisis and declining participation in the labour market, especially among men.

克鲁格的论文集中研究了教育、种族以及科技等等因素如何对于工人就业前景产生影响，同时不断辅以新数据源加以论证。他指出在美国阿片成瘾的危机和劳动力市场（尤指男性）参与度下降存在着关联。

【朝花夕拾】-- 【经济学人】每日打卡

And, often in partnership with Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel laureate who pioneered the application of psychology to economics, Mr Krueger dug into the measurement of subjective well-being, hoping to find better ways of capturing shifts in what matters most in life.

克鲁格经常与诺贝尔桂冠获得者卡尼曼合作（卡尼曼率先将心理学引入经济学）共同探讨对于人群“需求满足度”的衡量方法，希望籍此找出更好的方法掌握人群对于生活中头等大事的认知转换过程。

*bedrock -

*empirical -

*rustle up-

*scathing