2013年09月04日
哈佛商业评论4日刊登出已故经济学大师科斯的文章。科斯在文章中写道，如今的经济学，无论教科书上描写的还是课堂上教授的，都与商业管理联系不大，与企业家精神则关联更少。经济学与日常生活事务的脱节程度，是匪夷所思、让人遗憾的。
过去的情况却并非如此。在现代经济学诞生之时，亚当·斯密（Adam Smith）构想的经济学是对“国民财富的性质及生成原因”的研究。其开创性的著作《国富论》在商人之间被广为阅读，尽管斯密在书中直言不讳，抨击了他们的贪婪、短视以及其它缺点。这本书还激发并引导了政治家们对贸易及其它经济政策的辩论。当时，学术界不大，经济学家们不得不想法吸引大众读者。直至20世纪之交，阿尔弗雷德·马歇尔(Afred Marshall)也成功做到了让经济学“既研究财富又研究人”，当时经济学仍然与工业家息息相关。
到了20世纪，经济学整合成为了一种职业；经济学家们可以仅仅为了圈内人而著书立说。同时，这一领域在思维模式上也出现了转变，将自己视为经济化行为的理论模式，不再把现实世界的经济作为研究对象。而今，在经济学上，生产已经被边缘化，整个经济学的思维模式已经陷于静态的资源配置。经济学家用以分析商业公司的工具太过抽象化、推测性，以至于无法对那些不断努力向客户提供低成本创新产品的创业家和管理者们提供任何指导。
经济学与经济运行的脱离，对商业社区及学术领域都造成了极大的损害。由于经济学提供不了什么有实际作用的见解，管理者和企业家在决策过程中不得不依赖于自己的商业直觉、个人判断和经验法则。在危机时刻，当企业领导人失去自信时，他们通常会寻求政治力量的介入。逐渐地，对于从创新到就业等复杂的经济问题上，政府被视为是最终的解决方案。
经济学就这样成了国家用来管理经济的一种便利手段，而非让公众了解经济如何运行的一项工具。然而，由于经济学已经不再牢固植根于对经济运行的系统性实证研究，所以它连这一任务也几乎不能胜任。
在人类历史的大部分时期里，家庭和部落基本上都过着自给自足的生活；他们彼此之间及其与外部世界的联系是脆弱的、不连续的。然而，随着商业社会的兴起，这种情况被彻底改变了。如今，劳动分工日益细化的现代市场经济依赖于一个持续扩张的贸易网络，这需要一个错综复杂的社会体制网络来协调市场与公司在各领域的运行。当现代经济的制度密集度越来越高，把经济学简化为价格理论已经很麻烦了。
现在，应该让已经极其贫瘠的经济学领域与经济重新接轨。在中国、印度、非洲及其他世界各地大量涌现的市场经济体，宣告着企业家精神新纪元的到来，也催生了前所未有的机遇，让经济学家们可以去研究市场经济如何在文化、制度、组织多样化的社会中获得活力。但是，只有当经济学定位为去研究现实中的人以及实际存在的经济系统时，经济学这一领域才会创造出真正的知识。(邓小莉/译戴险峰/校)
罗纳德·科斯是诺贝尔经济学奖获得者，芝加哥大学法学院的荣誉教授。目前（2013年），正与王宁一起创办《人与经济》这本新杂志，后者是亚利桑那州立大学的教授。
Saving Economics from the Economists Economics as currently presented in textbooks and taught in the classroom does not have much to do with business management, and still less with entrepreneurship. The degree to which economics is isolated from the ordinary business of life is extraordinary and unfortunate. That was not the case in the past. When modern economics was born, Adam Smith envisioned it as a study of the “nature and causes of the wealth of nations.” His seminal work, The Wealth of Nations, was widely read by businessmen, even though Smith disparaged them quite bluntly for their greed, shortsightedness, and other defects. The book also stirred up and guided debates among politicians on trade and other economic policies. The academic community in those days was small, and economists had to appeal to a broad audience. Even at the turn of the 20th century, Alfred Marshall managed to keep economics as “both a study of wealth and a branch of the study of man.” Economics remained relevant to industrialists. In the 20th century, economics consolidated as a profession; economists could afford to write exclusively for one another. At the same time, the field experienced a paradigm shift, gradually identifying itself as a theoretical approach of economization and giving up the real-world economy as its subject matter. Today, production is marginalized in economics, and the paradigmatic question is a rather static one of resource allocation. The tools used by economists to analyze business firms are too abstract and speculative to offer any guidance to entrepreneurs and managers in their constant struggle to bring novel products to consumers at low cost. This separation of economics from the working economy has severely damaged both the business community and the academic discipline. Since economics offers little in the way of practical insight, managers and entrepreneurs depend on their own business acumen, personal judgment, and rules of thumb in making decisions. In times of crisis, when business leaders lose their self-confidence, they often look to political power to fill the void. Government is increasingly seen as the ultimate solution to tough economic problems, from innovation to employment. Economics thus becomes a convenient instrument the state uses to manage the economy, rather than a tool the public turns to for enlightenment about how the economy operates. But because it is no longer firmly grounded in systematic empirical investigation of the working of the economy, it is hardly up to the task. During most of human history, households and tribes largely lived on their own subsistence economy; their connections to one another and the outside world were tenuous and intermittent. This changed completely with the rise of the commercial society. Today, a modern market economy with its ever-finer division of labor depends on a constantly expanding network of trade. It requires an intricate web of social institutions to coordinate the working of markets and firms across various boundaries. At a time when the modern economy is becoming increasingly institutions-intensive, the reduction of economics to price theory is troubling enough. It is suicidal for the field to slide into a hard science of choice, ignoring the influences of society, history, culture, and politics on the working of the economy. It is time to reengage the severely impoverished field of economics with the economy. Market economies springing up in China, India, Africa, and elsewhere herald a new era of entrepreneurship, and with it unprecedented opportunities for economists to study how the market economy gains its resilience in societies with cultural, institutional, and organizational diversities. But knowledge will come only if economics can be reoriented to the study of man as he is and the economic system as it actually exists. Ronald Coase is a Nobel laureate in economics and a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Law School. He is launching a new journal, Man and the Economy, with Ning Wang of Arizona State University, who contributed to this column. 来源: [url=forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=346]科斯：从经济学家手中拯救经济学[/url]