2019年经济学人市场支配力 (1)（打印版）

Physicists' quest for a "theory of everything" is well-known.

物理学家对“万有理论”的追求人尽皆知。

The equivalent in economics is the hunt for common causes for the rich-world macroeconomic trends of the past decade or so:

经济学中的万有理论是追寻过去十多年中发达国家宏观经济趋势的普遍原因：

a shrinking share of the economic pie for workers, disappointing investment and lacklustre productivity growth.

工人经济蛋糕份额的萎缩、令人失望的投资记忆呆滞的生产率增长。

These must be reconciled with low interest rates, pockets of technological advance and juicy returns for investors willing to take risks.

这些必须与低利率、技术进步的空间以及投资者愿意冒风险的丰厚回报和解。

The leading economic theory of everything is that competition has weakened as markets have become more concentrated.

主要的万有理论经济理论是竞争随着市场变得越来越集中而被削弱。

Unlike firms in competitive markets, monopolies limit production in order to keep prices and profits high.

和竞争市场中的公司不同，为了保持高价格和高利润，垄断限制了生产。

They can therefore be expected to restrain their investment, too.

因此，他们也有可能限制他们的投资。

They might still be innovative—with monopoly profits up for grabs, why not be?—but market power usually makes economies less productive overall.

他们仍可以是有创造力的—垄断利润大家都有份，为什么不呢？—但是市场支配力通常会让经济整体生产力更低。

And monopolies have many opportunities to take bites out of labour's share of the pie.

垄断有很多吞食劳动者蛋糕份额的机会。

Their high profits typically flow to investors, not workers. Their high prices eat into the purchasing power of wages.

它们的高利润通常流向了投资者而非员工。它们的高价格耗费了工资购买力。

Their bargaining clout may even allow them to suppress pay directly.

它们的讨价还价的影响力甚至可以让它们直接抑制工资。

On April 3rd the IMF provided the latest evidence for parts of this theory.

4月3日，IMF提供了该理论的部分最新证据。

In a new study the fund's economists examined the markups over marginal cost—

在一项新研究中，IMF的经济学家调查了超过边际成本的利润—

one proxy for market power—charged by over 900,000 firms in 27 countries.

市场支配力的一个替代—该利润由27个国家中的九十万家公司收取。

They found that markups rose by 8% on average between 2000 and 2015.

他们发现在2000年和2015年间，利润平均增长8%。

In findings consistent with earlier analyses by The Economist,

在与本刊早期分析相一致的发现中，

the fund concluded that market power has risen notably in America

IMF总结得出市场支配力在美国显著增加

and by a smaller amount in Europe, and largely affected industries other than manufacturing (kept fiercely competitive by trade).

在欧洲小量增加，且极大地影响了工业和制造业（通过贸易保持激烈地竞争力）。