每日一篇:《经济学人》读译参考 Day47

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经济学人:合理的怀疑:信用卡账单到了(2)

Finance and Economics

财经

Free exchange: Reasonable doubt

自由交流：合理的怀疑

Mr Thaler, an American born in New Jersey in 1945, spent most of his early career at Cornell University before moving to the University of Chicago in 1995.Unusually for an economist, he is known for the clarity of his ideas and the quality of his writing.

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赛勒，这位1945年出生在新泽西州的美国人，在1995年转投芝加哥大学之前，在康奈尔大学渡过了他早期学术生涯的大部分时间。对于一位经济学家来说，不同寻常的是，他以观点的明晰和写作的质量而著称。

“Nudge”, a book co-written with Cass Sunstein, is both an extraordinarily influential work and a bestseller.Its lessons have been adopted by governments across the world; “nudge units” in America and Britain studied how to boost saving and taxpaying, encourage healthy behaviour and reduce energy use.

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《助推》(Nudge)，这本他与凯斯·桑斯坦合写的书，既是一本具有特殊影响力的著作，也是一本畅销书。该书的经验教训已经被世界各地的政府所采纳：在美国和英国，“助推小组”已经对如何提高储蓄、促进缴税、鼓励健康的行为和降低能源使用展开了研究。

“Nudge” drew on years of work by Mr Thaler and co-authors identifying oddities in human behaviour.Setting out to explore why people feel losses more keenly than gains, he helped uncover the endowment effect: a tendency to value something more highly just because you own it.

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《助推》综合了赛勒与合作者在辨识人类行为的异常方面所进行的多年研究。着手去探究为什么人们对损失比对收获感觉更强烈的他，促成了禀赋效应——这种仅仅是因为自己拥有就将其当作宝贝的倾向——的发现。

To detect it, he distributed coffee mugs at random to half of a group of test subjects, who were then invited to sell the mug, if they wished, to the other, mugless half.Theory would predict that those with and without mugs should value them the same, on average, and so about half of the mugs should change hands.

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为了探究这一效应，他把咖啡杯随机分发给了测试对象中的一半。之后，这一半测试对象受邀把杯子卖给没有杯子的另一半，如果他们希望这样做的话。理论会预期，总的来说，有杯子的没有杯子的应当对这些杯子给出一样的估价。因而，约有一半的杯子应当换手。

In fact, those with mugs valued them more than those without.Offers to buy the mugs by the have-nots were usually too low to convince the haves to sell, and relatively few transactions took place.This finding, since replicated many times, suggested that the context of an economic choice matters.That, in turn, means that the way choices are framed, by firms or governments, can influence how people respond.

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实际上，有杯子比没有杯子更把杯子当成宝贝。没有杯子的出价通常又太低，没法让有杯子的卖出杯子，因而只有相当少的交易发生。由于被反复做了多次，这一发现表明，经济选择的背景很重要。反过来，这又说说明，选择被企业和政府所构建的方式可能影响人们如何应对。

注释

1.Setting out 展示；启程；着手

例句:When setting out on a long walk, always wear suitable boots.

每次出发远行，都要穿合适的鞋子。

2.in turn 反过来

例句:The girls took it in turn to wipe down the tables after meals.

女孩子们饭后轮流擦桌子。

3.took place 发生

例句:Another dust-up took place in the teahouse.

茶馆里又发生了一场打斗。

4.In fact 实际上

例句:In fact, those people have been promoted.

事实上，那些人已经升职了。

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每日一篇:《经济学人》读译参考 Day46

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