斯坦福大學如何吸引經濟學泰斗
The center of gravity for economic thought in the United States has long been found along the two miles in Cambridge, Mass., that run between Harvard University and M.I.T. But there is new competition for that title, and it is quite a bit farther west.
一直以來，美國經濟學思想的中心都位於馬薩諸塞州坎布里奇的一段兩英里長的地帶，它的兩端分別是哈佛大學和麻省理工學院。但現在，在遙遠的西部，有了一個競爭者出現了。
Stanford University has lured an all-star lineup of economists to Palo Alto, Calif., in the last few years — and fended off Harvard’s and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s attempts to woo Stanford economists.
過去幾年裏，斯坦福大學將一大批明星經濟學家吸引到了加州帕洛阿爾託——併力保自己的經濟學家不被哈佛和麻省理工挖走。
The newest Stanford professors include a Nobel laureate — Alvin E. Roth, formerly of Harvard — but the shift is more noticeable among top young economists. Of the 11 people who have won the John Bates Clark Medal for best economist under age 40 since 2000, four are now at Stanford, more than at any other university. Two of them joined in the last few months: the inequality researcher Raj Chetty, who came from Harvard, and Matthew Gentzkow, who left the University of Chicago.
最新加盟斯坦福的教授包括諾貝爾獎獲得者、原先在哈佛的阿爾文·E·羅斯(Alvin E. Roth)，然而最能體現潮流涌動的是，那些頂尖青年經濟學家的去向。自2000年以來的11位約翰·貝茨·克拉克獎(John Bates Clark Medal)“40歲以下最佳經濟學家”得主中，有四人現在斯坦福，比任何大學都多。其中兩人是過去幾個月里加入的，他們是原在哈佛研究不平等問題的拉傑·切蒂(Raj Chetty)，以及從芝加哥大學轉投斯坦福的馬修·基恩茨科夫(Matthew Gentzkow)。
Stanford’s success with economists is part of a larger campaign to stake a claim as the country’s top university. Its draw combines a status as the nation’s “it” university — now with the lowest undergraduate acceptance rate and a narrow No. 2 behind Harvard for the biggest fund-raising haul — with its proximity to many of the world’s most dynamic companies. Its battle with Eastern universities echoes fights in other industries in which established companies, whether hotels or automobile makers, are being challenged by Silicon Valley money and entrepreneurship.
斯坦福正在努力將自己塑造成爲美國頭號大學，招募經濟學家方面的成功就是這項行動的一部分。它的吸引力來自兩方面，一是作爲當今美國最熱門的大學——它的本科入學率爲全美最低，募資能力也緊隨哈佛之後位居第二——還有它的周邊擁有全世界最具活力的企業。它和東部大學的對抗，和其他一些產業中的情況是相呼應的，從酒店到汽車生產商，老牌企業在各方面都面臨着硅谷資金和創業者的挑戰。
And it is a reflection of a broader shift in the study of economics, in which the most cutting-edge work increasingly relies less on a big-brained individual scholar developing mathematical theories, and more on the ability to crunch extensive sets of data to glean insights about topics as varied as how incomes differ across society and how industries organize themselves.
這也反映了經濟學研究層面的一場更廣泛的轉型，最尖端的工作開始越來越少地依賴那些腦力超羣、鑽研着數學理論的學者個體，而是更多取決於將大量數據粉碎後從中尋找有價值信息的能力，後者能用於處理各種的問題，可以是社會各階層的收入差異，也可以是產業的組織方式。
“Who wouldn’t want to be where the future of the world is being made?” said Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University (and regular contributor to The New York Times) who often blogs about trends in academic economics. Stanford’s economics department, he said, “has an excitement about it which Boston and Cambridge can’t touch.”
“一個爲世界營造未來的地方，誰不想去呢？”喬治·梅森大學(George Mason University)經濟學家（《紐約時報》長期撰稿人）泰勒·考文(Tyler Cowen)說，他經常通過博客談論經濟學的學術潮流。他說，斯坦福的經濟學系“有一種波士頓和坎布里奇沒法比擬的活躍氣氛”。
In economics, Stanford has frequently been ranked just behind Harvard, M.I.T., Princeton and the University of Chicago, including in the most recent U.S. News & World Report survey of graduate school rankings, conducted in 2013, and in calculations of which department’s scholars are most frequently cited in academic literature. That might change. In the last four years, Stanford has increased the number of senior faculty by 25 percent, and 11 scholars with millions in cumulative salary have either been recruited from other top programs or resisted poaching attempts by those programs.
在經濟學界，斯坦福經常被排在哈佛、麻省理工、普林斯頓和芝加哥大學後面，包括《美國新聞與世界報道》(U.S. News & World Report)最近發佈的一項2013年的研究生院調查，以及學者論文引用量的計算方面，都是如此。但這一點也許有變。過去四年裏，斯坦福的資深教員增加了25%，有11名領受數百萬美元累積薪俸的學者，要麼是從其他學校的頂尖科系挖來的，要麼拒絕這些科系的誘惑留了下來。
That said, Stanford’s reputation in the future may depend less on a few big-name recruits than on its ability to train the Ph.D.s whose scholarship is widely cited and reshapes important economic debates, or who become influential policy makers who advise presidents and lead central banks. The last 10 people to serve as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers have all had a Ph.D. from either Harvard or M.I.T. (the last without one was Janet L. Yellen, who left the job in 1999, and received hers from Yale). Among the Ph.D. economists who have exerted great influence on global economic policy in recent years, the former Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke; the European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi; the retiring International Monetary Fund chief economist, Olivier Blanchard; and the Fed vice chairman, Stanley Fischer, all studied at M.I.T.
然而，相比這些大人物的招募，斯坦福的未來更多地要看它培養的博士，他們的學術成就能否得到廣泛引用，影響重要的經濟學討論走向，或成爲位高權重的政策制定者，不管是作爲總統的顧問，還是央行的領導人。最近10任白宮經濟顧問委員會主席，都是哈佛或麻省理工的博士（最近一位不是來自這兩間學校的是1999年離職的珍妮特·L·耶倫，她是在耶魯取得博士學位）。近年對全球經濟政策有重大影響力的經濟學博士中，前美聯儲主席本·S·伯南克；歐洲央行行長馬里奧·德拉吉；即將退休的國際貨幣基金組織首席經濟學家奧利維爾· 布蘭查德；聯儲副主席斯坦利·費希爾(Stanley Fischer)，都出身麻省理工。
Unsurprisingly, many of those with top East Coast programs view Cambridge’s intellectual leadership role as safe. “Stanford’s keen interest in recruiting Harvard faculty is testimony to our strength,” said David Laibson, chairman of the Harvard economics department. “We’ve got a big target on our back because many of the world’s most exciting, creative, and innovative scholars are on our faculty, and Stanford is rightly going for some of them.” He notes that his department has lots of collaboration with other schools at Harvard, and that nearby M.I.T. and the National Bureau of Economic Research create a deep concentration of economic thinking, and said the department is on a recruiting push of its own.
不難想象，在東海岸的許多頂尖科系看來，坎布里奇在知識界的王者地位是不容撼動的。“斯坦福對招募哈佛教員如此上心，正說明了我們的強大，”哈佛經濟系主任戴維·萊布森(David Laibson)說。“我們很容易被盯上，因爲全世界最振奮人心、最具創造力和革新力的學者中，有許多在我們這裏，斯坦福當然會想得到他們。”他指出本系和哈佛其他院系和諸多合作，加之鄰近麻省理工和國家經濟研究局(National Bureau of Economic Research)，形成了經濟學研究工作的高度集中，並且他的系本身也在大舉招募人才。
But the recent recruiting success of Stanford shows something broader about how the economics profession is changing. The specialties of the new recruits vary, but they are all examples of how the momentum in economics has shifted away from theoretical modeling and toward “empirical microeconomics,” the analysis of how things work in the real world, often arranging complex experiments or exploiting large sets of data. That kind of work requires lots of research assistants, work across disciplines including fields like sociology and computer science, and the use of advanced computational techniques unavailable a generation ago.
然而斯坦福近年在招募上的成功表明，經濟學領域正在進行一場廣泛的轉型。新加盟的人才雖研究方向各有不同，但都能體現經濟學潮流從理論建模向“實證微觀經濟學”的轉變，後者是對真實世界的原理分析，時常要展開復雜的實驗，或利用大量的數據。這樣的工作需要許多研究助手，進行包括社會學、電腦科學等領域的跨學科研究，尖端電子計算技術的應用，是上一代人無法想象的。
That trend is evident across leading economics departments — the traditional powerhouses have plenty of scholars doing work in the same vein, including work by Esther Duflo at M.I.T. on how to test ways to fight global poverty and by Roland G. Fryer Jr. at Harvard on the roots of racial inequality. But the scholars who have newly signed on with Stanford described a university particularly well suited to research in that vein, with a combination of lab space, strong budgets for research support and proximity to engineering talent.
在所有領先的經濟學院系，這種趨勢都顯而易見——在那些實力強大的傳統經濟學院系，也有很多學者在進行實證微觀經濟學類的研究，比如麻省理工的埃斯特·迪弗洛(Esther Duflo)有關如何檢驗對抗全球貧困的方法的研究，哈佛大學的小羅蘭·G·費賴爾(Roland G. Fryer Jr.)在種族不平等的根源方面的研究。但是，最近和斯坦福大學簽約的學者們表示，該校尤其適合做這類研究，因爲它有實驗室空間、充足的研究預算和唾手可得的工程人才。
“I was very happy where I was in Chicago, but it felt like there is a sense of excitement and really building something at Stanford,” Mr. Gentzkow said. “Stanford as a university is in a really strong position right now, and has a lot of resources, and seems very committed to using those resources to build on the frontier of economics.”
“之前在芝加哥大學工作，我也很開心，但斯坦福好像有種讓人興奮的感覺，而且這裏確實在成就些一些東西，”基恩茨科夫說道。“作爲一所大學，斯坦福目前實際上處在非常有利的位置，而且它似乎非常有心將這些資源用於經濟學前沿領域的研究。”
Recent hires said that their compensation packages were about the same as their previous employers offered, though in some cases with more generous research budgets. Provost John W. Etchemendy argued that the university’s recruiting had benefited from cross-departmental work as economists share ideas and resources with, for example, computer science and statistics departments.
最新加盟的學者表示，他們的薪酬水平和之前所在的大學差不多，只不過在有些情況下他們手上的科研預算更加寬裕些。教務長約翰·W·埃切門迪(John W. Etchemendy)表示，斯坦福大學的招聘工作從該校的跨院系合作中獲益很多，因爲經濟學家會和諸如計算機科學和統計系的學者交流思想，共享資源。
Mr. Roth, who joined Stanford from Harvard in 2012, cited his own work on kidney transplants as an example. He has led efforts to build a “paired exchange” system through which people who cannot donate a kidney to a loved one because of a mismatch in blood type, antigens or antibodies can instead donate a kidney to a recipient who is a match and who has a donor willing and able to donate to the other recipient. He collaborates with colleagues from the medical and engineering schools. “This gets very computationally complex,” he said.
2012年從哈佛跳槽到斯坦福的羅斯列舉了他自己在腎臟移植方面的研究工作。他一直致力於建立一個“配對交換”系統，通過這一系統，那些因血型、抗原或抗體不匹配而無法給摯愛親友捐獻腎臟的人，可以將腎臟捐獻給與之匹配、同時又有捐贈意願可以給其他人捐獻器官的腎臟接受者。他在和醫學院、工程學院的同事合作。“這樣的系統在計算上是非常複雜的，”他說。
Mr. Chetty, meanwhile, saw benefits in the concentration of research that uses Big Data, large sets of research that are hard to compile and analyze. His work has examined, for example, whether the quality of a kindergarten teacher has long-lasting effects on a person’s life and earnings.
與此同時，切蒂也看到專注於使用大數據的研究會有怎樣的益處，這種大型研究的編制和分析非常困難。比如，他所做的項目就研究了幼兒園教師的品質是否會對一個人未來的生活和收入產生持續性的影響。
“Some of the attraction of the Bay Area is simply the fact that there are exciting opportunities with data and methods and machine learning,” he said. And that type of work requires lab space that more closely resembles that needed in the hard sciences — a fact Stanford has exploited.
“灣區吸引人的地方就在於，它在數據、方法和機器學習方面，存在一些令人興奮的機遇，”他說。那類研究所需要的實驗室空間與硬科學更接近——斯坦福利用了這一點。
Less clear is whether the agglomeration of economic stars at Stanford will ever amount to the kind of coherent school of thought that has been achieved at some other great universities.
相對不那麼清楚的是，明星經濟學者在斯坦福大學扎堆，是否也能形成其他頂尖大學已具備的一脈相承的學派。
The Chicago School, under the intellectual imprint of Milton Friedman, was a leader in neoclassical thought that emphasizes the efficiency of markets and the risks of government intervention. M.I.T.’s economics department has a long record of economic thought in the Keynesian tradition, and it produced several of the top policy makers who have guided the world economy through the tumultuous last several years.
以米爾頓·弗裏德曼(Milton Friedman)爲代表的芝加哥經濟學派，是新古典思想中的翹楚，他們強調市場的效率和政府幹預的風險。麻省理工學院經濟學系一直秉承凱恩斯的傳統，培養出多位身居高位的經濟決策人士，在過去幾年引領世界經濟度過了重重風波。
“There isn’t a Stanford school of thought,” said B. Douglas Bernheim, chairman of the university’s economics department. “This isn’t a doctrinaire place. Generally doctrine involves simplification, and increasingly we recognize that these social issues we’re trying to figure out are phenomenally complicated. The consensus at Stanford has focused around the idea that you have to be open to a lot of approaches and ways of thinking about things, and to be rigorous, thorough and careful in bringing the highest standard of craft to bear on your research.”
“不存在什麼斯坦福學派，”斯坦福大學經濟學教授B·道格拉斯·伯恩海姆(B. Douglas Bernheim)說。“這不是一個講究學說的地方。學說往往會簡化事物，而我們越來越意識到，我們所要努力解決的社會議題是極爲錯綜複雜的。在斯坦福，我們的主要共識是，研究人員必須對各種研究方法和思維方式保持開放心態，但在自己的研究上則要嚴格、徹底和謹慎地採用最高標準。”
In other words, it is less about the specific conclusion a scholar reaches, and more about how they get there.
換句話說，更重要的不是學者得出怎樣的具體結論，而是得出結論的過程。
“My sense is this is a good development for economics,” Mr. Chetty said. “I think Stanford is going to be another great department at the level of Harvard and M.I.T. doing this type of work, which is an example of economics becoming a deeper field. It’s a great thing for all the universities — I don’t think it’s a zero-sum game.”
“我感覺這對經濟學而言，是一種進步，”切蒂說道。“我認爲從事此類研究的斯坦福，會成爲另一個可以和哈佛和麻省理工經濟學系相媲美的頂級院系，這類研究證明經濟學領域的研究正在變得更加深入。這對整個世界來說，都是天大的好事——我不認爲這是非此即彼的零和遊戲。”
And in its recent recruiting, Stanford may have had a secret weapon, coming from the skies. “Even the weather cooperated with us this year,” Mr. Bernheim said. “Nine feet of snow in Boston this past winter couldn’t have hurt.”
在最近的學者招募中，斯坦福可能已經還有一個天賜的祕密武器。“連今年的天氣都很配合我們，”伯恩海姆說。“去年冬天波士頓九尺深的大雪肯定有好處。”
