Finance and economics
财经商业
China's economy
中国经济
An alternative view
另一视角
China's official figures both understate and overstate inflation
中国官方数据既低估又高估了通货膨胀
IS CHINA'S economy underheating?
中国经济正在降温？
Not long ago, many people would have scoffed at the suggestion.
前不久，许多人可能还对这种观点嗤之以鼻。
经济问题.jpg
The country is known for searing property prices, hot-money inflows and the steam escaping from its financial furnaces.
中国正以其过热的房地产价格、大量流入的热钱和蒸汽缭绕的金融市场大熔炉而扬名于世。
The stock of outstanding credit, broadly defined, climbed to over 180% of GDP at the end of 2013,
根据央行数据，截至2013年底，广义未偿债务已超过GDP的180%；
according to the central bank, and over 215%, according to an even broader measure by Fitch, a ratings agency.
而根据评级机构惠誉更大范围的测算结果，该数字已超过215%。
But house prices are slowing, exports are weak and shadow banking is losing ground to traditional lending.
但房价涨速放缓，出口疲软，影子银行在传统借贷上的优势正在丧失。
Forecasters expected industrial output to grow by 9.5% in the first two months of 2014, compared with a year earlier;
预测者曾预期2014年前2月的工业出口同比去年增长9.5%，
it grew by only 8.6%.
但仅同比增长了8.6%。
Moreover, evidence of excess has long been absent from the traditional measure of economic overheating: inflation.
此外，长久以来，针对经济过热的传统测算一直缺失通货膨胀这一证据。
New figures suggest that consumer prices rose by only 2% in the year to February,
新的数据表明，截至2014年2月，居民消费价格仅增长2%，
well below China's average inflation of over 3% in the past decade.
显著低于过去十年间中国超过3%的平均通货膨胀率。
The prices paid to producers fell, again.
采购价格也又一次下降。
One way to reconcile the inflation number with other signs of excess is to disbelieve it.
把通货膨胀数字和经济过热的其他迹象相匹配的办法之一，就是对其持有怀疑。
China's critics routinely argue that inflation is higher than the government's statisticians claim.
中国的评论家们照旧争论说通货膨胀数据高于政府统计专家所声称的数据。
But although it is easy to say the official figures are bad, it is difficult to quantify how bad.
但是，口头说说官方数据较差，这很容易，但很难去量化到底有多差。
That is the tricky task that Emi Nakamura, Jon Steinsson and Miao Liu of Columbia University set themselves in a recent study.
哥伦比亚大学的Emi Nakamura、Jon Steinsson和Miao Liu正在最近的研究中进行这一棘手的工作。
They start with an economic law first observed by a 19th-century statistician, Ernst Engel:
他们的入手点是19世纪统计学家恩斯特恩格尔首次发现的一条经济法则：
richer households spend a smaller share of their income on food.
家庭越富裕，购买食物的支出占家庭收入的份额越小。
Thus as a household becomes richer over time,
因此，一个家庭随着时间的推移变得更加富裕时，
its spending pattern should match that of households who were equally rich a year or two before.
它的支出模式应该与一年或两年前同等富裕的家庭相匹配。
But in China, they discovered something different.
但他们发现，在中国的情况有所不同。
They compared urban households in 2006 with households that were, according to the official figures, equally rich in 2008.
他们将2006年的城市家庭与2008年官方数据显示的同等富裕的家庭进行了对比，
They discovered that the later households were devoting 3-4% more of their budgets to food.
发现后者分配在食物上的预算要高上3-4%。
Perhaps they were not quite as rich as their 2006 counterparts, after all.
可能后者终究还是没有2006年同比家庭那么富裕。
The reason is that the cost of living rose faster in the intervening years than official figures suggested—much faster.
原因在于，在这几年间，生活成本的涨速已远远超过官方数据。
The economists believe true inflation may have been as high as 20% in 2007 and 18% in 2008,
经济学家们相信，2007、2008两年的实际通货膨胀率已经分别高达20%和18%，与此相比，
compared with official figures of 4.8% and 5.9%.
官方数据仅为4.8%和5.9%。
This dramatic increase in the cost of living partly reflects a spike in pork prices after an outbreak of disease fattened the price of hogs by about 60%.
在一场突发疾病导致生猪价格上涨了约60%之后，这种生活成本的急剧增长在一定程度上就反映了猪肉价格飙升这一情形。
Did the government simply lie about this price pressure?
仅仅是政府在这种价格压力上撒谎了么？
Possibly. But if so, its rationale is not clear.
可能吧。但要是这样，其基本原因并不明确。
Understating inflation does not suppress the discontent it causes.
低估通货膨胀并不能抑制它所引发的不满情绪。
The public pays more attention to the price of pork in the market than to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.
公众更多关注的是市场上猪肉的价格，而不是国家统计局发布的数字。
Moreover, it turns out that China's official figures do not always understate inflation.
另外，中国的官方数据并非总是低估通货膨胀。
From 1996 to 2006, they actually exaggerated it in every year but one, according to the same method.
1996-2006年间，按照相同计算方法来看，除其中一年外，实际上每年官方数据都夸大了通货膨胀。
As a result, urban consumption was growing even faster in this period than the official statistics conveyed.
因此，此期间内城镇消费的增长甚至要比官方发布的数据还快。
China's policymakers had more to boast about than they knew.
中国的政策制定者们还能再做更大程度的自夸。
The inflation figures calculated by the three economists are also remarkably well correlated with the official numbers.
上述三位经济学家计算出的通货膨胀数据也非常好地匹配了官方数据，
They rise and fall in unison.
双方数据的上涨和下落相一致。
It is just that the unofficial figures rise faster and fall further.
只是这些非官方数据上涨速度更快，下落幅度也更大。
The trio conjecture that two competing biases are at work.
三人推测，有两方相互竞争的偏见在起作用。
First, new goods are often of higher quality than the ones they replace,
首先，新商品的质量往往比其所替代的商品更高，
but their price is the same.
但二者价格一样。
That would explain why China overstated inflation before 2007.
这可以解释为何中国在2007年以前高估了通货膨胀率。
More subtly, statisticians sometimes fail to grasp that new goods are merely upgrades of existing ones.
更微妙的是，有时统计学家们并没有注意到新产品其实仅仅是现有产品的升级，
So they invent new categories; that biases inflation towards zero.
所以他们制定出了新的产品类别，这就使通货膨胀率偏向零。
As a consequence, China's official figures present a smoothed version of reality, the authors write.
因此，三人在研究中写道，中国官方数据展现了一种被平滑了的现实。
Those numbers do not, then, reveal the whole truth about China's economy, as the cynics point out.
愤世嫉俗者们指出，那么这些数据就没有披露中国经济的全部实情。
But their shortcomings are not simply statistical flattery.
但这些数据的缺点并非在于美化实情，
They are closer to statistical smooth-talk.
而是更偏向于圆滑地表述了实情。 |