经济学人:合理的怀疑:只见部分,不辩总体(2)

 　　Making enrolment in pension plans the default for new employees  例如，把加入养老金计划列为新员工的默认选项

　　(ie, they must decide to opt¹ out rather than opt in) dramatically increases the share of employees saving through such programmes, for example. （即，他必须选择退出而不是加入）极大地提高了通过此类计划进行储蓄的员工的比例。

　　Mr Thaler, with Mr Kahneman and Jack² Knetsch, also worked to understand the role of fairness in judging economic outcomes. 赛勒还与卡尼曼和杰克·克内齐对理解公平在判定经济结果中的作用进行了研究。

　　They conducted experiments in which a student chosen at ran dom was asked to divide $20 between himself and another subject. 他们进行了一系列随机挑选的一位学生被要求在他自己与另一个对象之间平分20美元的实验。

　　Only rarely would the student keep most of the money, as pure rationality suggests he should. 只有在极少数的情况下，这位学生才会像纯理性所说的那样，留下大部分钱。

　　Similarly, the authors used surveys to show that people find practices like price gouging³ in the wake of disasters unfair. 同样地，作者使用了各种调查来说明，人们认为灾难后哄抬价格这类行为是不公平的。

　　In some multi-round experiments players chose to punish participants who acted selfishly in early rounds, even if that meant accepting a lower payout themselves. 在一些多轮次的实验中，参与者选择去惩罚在前面轮次中表现自私的同伴，纵然这意味着他们自己要更低的。

　　These insights—that people care about fairness, find self-control hard and hate losing what they already have—may seem trivial outside the strange world of economics. 在陌生的经济学世界之外，这些深刻见解——人们关注公平、发现很难自律、讨厌失去已经拥有的东西——可能看起来微不足道。

　　In fact, the greatest contribution of behavioural economics may have been to nudge the field away from attempts to extrapolate grand theories from basic rules of individual behaviour. 实际上，行为经济学的最大贡献可能就是推动这一学科脱离从个人行为的基本规律中推导出宏大理论的尝试。

　　Today ambitious economists⁴ are quite likely to immerse themselves in empirical work focused on specific policy questions. 如今，有抱负的经济学家很有可能埋首于聚焦各种特殊政策问题的实证性研究之中。

　　That is a legacy⁵ worth treasuring, however you do the mental accounting⁶. 这是一项值得珍惜的遗产，不管你如何进行心理盘算。

1 opt   

vi.选择，决定做某事

参考例句：

• They opt for more holiday instead of more pay.他们选择了延长假期而不是增加工资。
• Will individual schools be given the right to opt out of the local school authority?各个学校可能有权选择退出地方教育局吗？

2 jack   

n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克

参考例句：

• I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
• He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。

3 gouging   

n.刨削[槽]v.凿( gouge的现在分词 )；乱要价；（在…中）抠出…；挖出…

参考例句：

• Banks and credit-card companies have been accused of gouging their customers. 银行和信用卡公司被指控欺诈顾客。 来自辞典例句
• If back-gouging is applied, grinding to bright metal is required. 如果采用火焰气刨，则应将其打磨至可见光亮的金属表面。 来自互联网

4 economists   

n.经济学家，经济专家( economist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The sudden rise in share prices has confounded economists. 股价的突然上涨使经济学家大惑不解。
• Foreign bankers and economists cautiously welcomed the minister's initiative. 外国银行家和经济学家对部长的倡议反应谨慎。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 legacy   

n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西

参考例句：

• They are the most precious cultural legacy our forefathers left.它们是我们祖先留下来的最宝贵的文化遗产。
• He thinks the legacy is a gift from the Gods.他认为这笔遗产是天赐之物。

6 accounting   

n.会计，会计学，借贷对照表

参考例句：

• A job fell vacant in the accounting department.财会部出现了一个空缺。
• There's an accounting error in this entry.这笔账目里有差错。