“这是不是史上最有效的发展项目？”哥伦比亚大学(Columbia University)政治科学家克里斯布拉特曼(Chris Blattman)问。他补充道：“我认为这个项目能够参与角逐。”

　　The programme is simple enough to explain: give cash handouts of $50,000 to aspiring Nigerian entrepreneurs. Yes, you read that last sentence correctly — but more about the Nigerian cash drop in due course. It is merely the most eye-catching in a stack of research and policy papers to conclude that an excellent cure for the problem of poverty is simply to give poor people money.

　　这个项目解释起来非常简单：给有志成为企业家的尼日利亚人发放5万美元的现金。是的，上一句话你没看错——更多关于这笔钱的内容会在后面讲到。这只是一大堆研究论文和政策文件中最引人注目的一部分，即认为解决贫困问题的一个良策是直接给穷人发钱。

　　直接发钱能帮助穷人吗?

　　That idea seems almost naive. Instinctively, we tend to feel that victims of famines and earthquakes need food and shelter rather than inedible cash. We may feel, also, that cash will be wasted — stolen, spent on drink, frittered away on treats or siphoned off by grasping relatives. Even if the money is well spent, will it generate self-sustaining economic growth? Yet an increasing number of development policy types are reaching the conclusion that cash beats many of the alternatives.

　　看起来，这个想法几乎可以说是天真的。我们本能地觉得，饥荒和地震的受害者需要的是食物和庇护所，而不是不能拿来吃的金钱。我们还可能觉得，这些钱会被浪费——被偷了、用来喝酒了，浪费在享乐上了，或者被贪心的亲戚卷走了。就算这些钱得到了很好的利用，是否就能够带来可自我维持的财务增长呢？然而，越来越多种类的发展政策正得出结论：钱胜过了许多替代选项。

　　Ponder the most obvious objection first: that poor people will waste the money. David Evans and Anna Popova of the World Bank surveyed 19 randomised trials across the world studying cash transfers. Not one of them found evidence that spending on alcohol or tobacco had increased by a statistically significant amount. Poor people have better things to do with the money and often spend it well or even invest it successfully.

　　先来考虑一下最显而易见的反对意见：穷人会浪费这笔钱。世界银行(World Bank)的戴维埃文斯(David Evans)和安娜波波娃(Anna Popova)对分布于世界各地、研究现金转移的19个随机性试验进行了调查。两人都没有发现任何证据，表明接受现金转移的人花在烟酒上的支出出现了有统计意义的增长。穷人会用这笔钱去做更好的事情，他们通常会很好地利用这笔钱，甚至进行成功的投资。

　　Blattman and his colleagues conducted what one might regard as a test-to-destruction of the “just give cash” policy. They handed out $200 at a time to homeless thieves and drug dealers in the slums of Liberia as part of a larger randomised trial. One could hardly think of a cash injection more likely to be squandered. And yet, on average, just $8 was spent on drinking or drugs; the rest was spent on rent, food, clothes and “business investments”. The most successful of these was a barrel full of strong drink that was resold by the cupful on the street.

　　布拉特曼和他的同事对“直接给钱”政策进行了一种“破坏性试验”。作为一个范围更大的随机性试验的一部分，他们一次给利比里亚贫民窟里无家可归的小偷和毒贩发放200美元的现金。很难想象还有什么现金投入比这更容易遭到挥霍了。然而，拿到这些钱的人花在喝酒或毒品上的金额平均仅为8美元；其他则花在了租金、食物、衣服和“商业投资”上。其中最成功的支出是买了一满桶烈酒，然后在街上一杯杯转卖出去。

　　What about the rather different idea of handing out cash in emergency situations — after earthquakes or famines or to refugees? (It is now possible to do this electronically through an ATM card or mobile phone.)

　　那么，与此不同的另一个想法怎么样？即在紧急情况下发放现金——比如在地震或者饥荒发生后，或者发放对象为难民。（通过一张可用于ATM机的卡或者手机，现在完全可以通过电子手段做到这件事。）

　　Clearly there will be times when cash is useless because there is nothing to buy. But if refugees have money, entrepreneurs will scramble to solve logistical problems and supply them with things to spend the money on. Except for a few cases, such as vitamins and vaccines, refugees are likely to understand their own needs best.

　　显然，有时金钱毫无用处，因为没有可以购买的东西。但一旦难民有了钱，企业家就会努力克服运输问题，提供他们可以花钱购买的东西。除了维生素和疫苗等少数东西，难民通常最能理解他们自身的需求。

　　And while cash can be stolen, it is easier to keep electronic cash transfers secure than to ship food long distances through hostile terrain, with each warlord along the way extracting a cut.

　　尽管钱可能会被盗取，但保证电子现金转移的安全要比经由敌对领土长距离运输食物更容易，在后一种情况下，沿途的每一个军阀都会雁过拔毛。

　　Donor agencies are starting to experiment with cash transfers in humanitarian crises. A commission chaired by Owen Barder of the Center for Global Development recently made its recommendations to the UK’s Department for International Development. The first one: “Give more unconditional cash transfers. The questions should always be asked, ‘Why not cash?’ and ‘If not now, when?’”

　　捐助机构已开始尝试在人道主义危机中进行现金转移。由全球发展中心(Center for Global Development)的欧文巴德(Owen Barder)领导的一个委员会最近对英国国际发展部(DFID)提出建议。第一个建议是：“进行更多无条件现金转移。我们总是需要问自己这样的问题，‘为何不给现金呢？’以及‘如果不是现在，什么时候呢？’”

　　So what about those Nigerian entrepreneurs? We already knew that small business grants could have big impacts. A few years ago I reported on an experiment conducted by David McKenzie, Suresh de Mel and Chris Woodruff in Sri Lanka after the catastrophic tsunami of 2004.

　　那些尼日利亚企业家又如何呢？我们已经知道，小笔的商业资助金能够产生巨大的影响。几年前，我曾经报道过戴维麦肯齐(David McKenzie)、苏雷什德梅尔(Suresh de Mel)和克里斯伍德拉夫(Chris Woodruff)在2004年发生海啸灾难后的斯里兰卡进行的一次试验。

　　They gave out modest grants of around $100 to $200 to business owners, and found that on average these cash injections were invested with very high returns — around 10 per cent a month. But these were tiny one-person businesses.

　　他们向企业主发放了100美元到200美元左右的小笔现金，发现这些现金投入的平均投资回报率非常高——大约为每月10%。但这些是由一个人组成的微型企业。

　　Now David McKenzie has conducted this Nigerian trial of much larger handouts, with the aim of producing larger businesses with the potential to create jobs. The trial examined a business-plan competition — a policy wonk’s version of Dragons’ Den — that was funded by the Nigerian government and run by the World Bank and the Department for International Development. Several hundred applicants won outright but several hundred more were chosen by lottery from the runners-up. By comparing the lottery winners and the lottery losers, McKenzie could see the impact of the cash grant. It was large: three years on, the lucky winners were almost twice as likely as the losers to be running a business, and three times as likely to be employing more than 10 people. Such employers are exceedingly rare in Nigeria but a third of the lottery winners were among their ranks.

　　现在，戴维麦肯齐在尼日利亚进行的这个试验发放的金额要大得多，目的是产生有可能创造工作机会的更大的企业。这项试验研究了一项商业策划比赛——一个政策专家版的《龙穴》（Dragons’ Den，一档英国商业真人秀节目——译者注）。该比赛由尼日利亚政府出资，举办者为世界银行和英国国际发展部。有几百名申请者直接赢得资助，但还有另外几百人通过从余下申请者中抽奖发放资金。通过比较被抽中和没被抽中的人，麦肯齐能够发现现金资助的影响。这种影响是巨大的：3年过去了，被幸运抽中的人开办企业的几率几乎是落选者的两倍，而前者雇佣逾10名员工的几率则是后者的3倍。这样的雇主在尼日利亚极其稀少，但有三分之一的被抽中者是这样的雇主。

　　Of course, $50,000 is a lot of money and one might expect it to do some good — but McKenzie estimates that the cost per job created compares very favourably with popular entrepreneurship programmes such as mentoring or training. The truth is that while entrepreneurs in Nigeria and other poor countries are held back by corruption, red tape, poor roads and patchy electricity, they are also constrained by a lack of the funds needed to get their ideas off the ground. That is a solvable problem.

　　当然，5万美元是一大笔钱，人们理应期待这笔钱能发挥一些作用——但据麦肯齐估计，这种方式创造每一份工作的成本远远优于指导和培训等流行的创业项目。真相是，尼日利亚和其他穷国的企业家不仅受腐败、繁文缛节、糟糕的路况和时有时无的电力掣肘，还受限于缺乏实现他们的想法所需的资金。而这是一个可以解决的问题。

　　But does McKenzie agree with Blattman that he may have discovered the most effective development programme in history? No, he tells me with a chuckle. The most effective development programme, he says, is to let people move to another country. Now that’s a topic for another day.

　　那么麦肯齐是否同意布拉特曼的说法，认为他或许发现了史上最有效的发展项目？并非如此，他轻笑着告诉我。他说，最有效的发展项目，是允许人们迁移到另一个国家。而这又是另一个议题了。