2024考研英語：《經濟學人》中英讀譯Day231

英語閱讀能力依靠什么？必然是詞匯的積累，但，僅僅是詞匯的積累是不夠了，更應該了解英語句式，不同句型所表達意義。如何培養自己的閱讀語感呢？那么就跟著聚創考研網小編每天學一點英語，一起為考研筑起堅實的地基。閱讀是需要積累的，就像我們需要經常和人溝通才會促進我們的表達能力一樣~小伙伴跟著小編一起，每天堅持打卡，培養英語閱讀能力及語感，了解文章一些經典詞匯的用法。

經濟學人：為什么經濟學不能理解商業(下)

Where there is the delegation of tasks, there is a problem of motivation--how to get an employee to act on behalf of the firm, to be a team player, rather than narrowly self-serving.This is known in economics as the principal-agent problem, the source of much illuminating theory in this period.Incentives matter, of course, but often the best approach is for organisations to pay a fixed salary and not to tie rewards to any one task.Tie teachers' pay to exam results, for instance, and they will "teach to the test", instead of inspiring pupils to think independently.Such avenues of research would earn Nobel prizes in economics for Oliver Williamson, Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmstrom.(Coase had won the prize in 1991; Simon in 1978.)Their work explains in part why, by the mid-1990s, our business-school professor was so confident that economics should rule the study of business.

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哪里要委托任務，哪里就有動力問題 -- 如何讓員工代表公司行事，成為團隊的一員，而不是狹隘地為自己謀利。這在經濟學上被稱為委托代理問題，是這一時期許多有啟發性的理論的來源。當然，激勵很重要，但通常最好的方法是讓組織支付固定的工資，不要將獎勵與任何一項任務掛鉤。例如，如果將教師的工資與考試成績掛鉤，他們就會"為了考試而教學"，而不是鼓勵學生獨立思考。這樣的研究途徑后來讓奧利弗·威廉森、奧利弗·哈特和本特·霍姆斯特羅姆贏得諾貝爾經濟學獎。(科斯于1991年獲獎，西蒙于1978年獲獎。)他們的工作在一定程度上解釋了為什么在20世紀90年代中期，商學院的教授們如此自信地認為經濟學應該統治商業研究。

 

The bestselling books of Michael Porter, an economist-turned-business guru, further fuelled such optimism, as did excitement about the potential for game theory in corporate strategy.Yet today if a firm hires a chief economist, it is for a take on GDP growth or the policy of the Federal Reserve.It is not for advice on corporate strategy.There are reasons for this.One is academic prestige.Economics likes to see itself as a foundational discipline, like physics, not a practical one, like engineering.But most of what makes for a flourishing business cannot be captured in a tight theory with a few equations.Often it is a matter of how well ideas, information and decision-making spread throughout the firm.And pay is not the only motivation.

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邁克爾·波特是一位經濟學出身的商業界大師，他的暢銷書進一步助長了這種樂觀情緒，人們對博弈論在企業戰略中的潛力感到興奮，這也起到了相同的助長作用。然而，現在如果一家公司聘請了一位首席經濟學家，那是為了咨詢關于GDP增長或美聯儲政策的看法。而不是尋求企業戰略方面的建議。出現這種現象是有原因的。一個原因是學術聲望。經濟學喜歡把自己看作類似物理學的基礎學科，而不是類似工程學的實用學科。但是，促成企業蓬勃發展的大部分因素，不可能用含有幾個方程式的嚴密理論來描述。通常，這是想法、信息、決策在整個公司傳達得有多好的問題。而薪酬并不是唯一動力。

 

Strong businesses are shaped by shared values and common ideas about the right way to do things--by corporate culture.People take pride in their work and their workplace.These are not natural subjects for economists.Nor is economics comfortable with the specificity of business problems.Solving them is more than a simple matter of establishing the right economic incentives.It requires detailed knowledge of technology, processes and competitors as well as social psychology and political trends.Economics is never enough.Many of the influences on any topical business issue--which tech firm will win the AI race, say--lie outside its purview.There are economic ideas that business people ignore at their peril.If a firm's strategy can be freely copied, it should expect its profits to be competed away quickly.A sound business needs an edge.But beyond such precepts, economics has little of practical use to say about what makes a successful company.The study of business remains an outpost of the empire.It now seems unlikely it will ever fully conquer the terrain.

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強大的企業是由共同的價值觀和對于正確做事方式的共同看法而塑造的，即企業文化。人們為自己的工作和工作單位感到自豪。這些不是經濟學家會自然研究的主題。經濟學也對商業問題的特殊性感到不自在。解決這些問題不僅僅是建立正確的經濟激勵機制這么簡單。還需要對技術、流程、競爭對手，以及社會心理學和政治趨勢有詳細的了解。光靠經濟學是永遠不夠的。對熱門商業問題 -- 比如哪家科技公司將贏得人工智能競賽 -- 產生各種影響并不在經濟學的權限之內。而有一些經濟學理念，商界人士若忽視了，就要自己承擔風險。如果一家公司的戰略可以被自由復制，它就應該預料到自己的利潤會很快被競爭對手奪走。穩健的企業需要有自己的優勢。但除了這些準則，在說明是什么造就了成功企業方面，經濟學幾乎沒有實際用處。商業研究仍然是經濟學帝國的邊遠前哨。現在看來，經濟學可能永遠無法完全征服這一地帶。