曼昆经济学原理阅读笔记.doc

曼昆经济学原理阅读笔记(一)

曼昆的经济学定义:Economics is the study of how society manages its scarce resources。
曼昆的经济学十原理中第一条:PEOPLE FACE TRADEOFFS。这一原理的的两段经典举例:

When people are grouped into societies, they face different kinds of trade offs. The classic tradeoff is between “guns and butter.” The more we spend on national defense to protect our shores from foreign aggressors (guns), the less we can spend on consumer goods to raise our standard of living at home (butter). Also important in modern society is the tradeoff between a clean environment and a high level of e. Laws that require firms to reduce pollution raise the cost of producing goods and services. Because of the higher costs, these firms end up earning smaller profits, paying lower wages, charging higher prices, or bination of these three. Thus, while pollution regulations give us the benefit of a cleaner environment and the improved health es with it, they have the cost of reducing the es of the firms’ owners, workers, and customers.

Another tradeoff society faces is between efficiency and equity. Efficiency means that society is getting the most it can from its scarce resources. Equity means that the benefits of those resources are distributed fairly among society’s members. In other words, efficiency refers to the size of the economic pie, and equity refers to how the pie is divided. Often, when government policies are being designed, these two goals conflict.

Efficiency 的定义:the property of society getting the most it can from its scarce resources。
Equity 的定义:the property of distributing economic prosperity fairly among the members of society。

对于社会决策者的 ZF 来说,效率和平等是一对很难平衡的矛盾,容易顾此失彼。显而易见,如果一个 ZF 的经济政策造成的局面是既缺少效率,又增大了不平等,那对该 ZF 的评价只能是失败。ZF 是代表社会行使管理稀缺资源的主体,要提高资源利用的效率,就要牺牲平等,要兼顾平等,就会打击勤奋群体的工作效率。但至少,无论经济政策往哪一方倾斜,对于社会整体来说,是在进步。如果这些资源被有特权的特定群体所占据,则不可能出现效率,同时又不能产生平等。既无效率又无平等的社会,其崩溃是必然的。眼前正是这样一个病态的社会,决策者再不悬崖勒马,可以想见其结局。

在资源由构成社会的所有家庭和公司的联合作用或集体行为分配的社会中,出现上述矛盾的时候,是相对容易解决的,因为决策总是根据人们的利益倾向于去纠正过当的行为;而