Developed market economies, bloated and solipsistic as they are, hog as much attention as they can in the field of global economics. Currently they are dominating a debate about an apparent slowdown in long-term rates of growth, which generally goes under the name of “secular stagnation”.
臃肿而自以为是的发达市场经济体，总是在全球经济领域竭尽所能地吸引眼球。当前，他们正在主导一场关于长期经济增长率明显下降的讨论，这种放缓通常被冠以“长期停滞”(secular stagnation)之名。
Yet, as the International Monetary Fund and others have warned, the phenomenon of slowing trend growth stretches across emerging markets too — if anything even more so. The causes may be different, but the challenge of reversing the unwelcome development is no less difficult. Not only that, but the unusual pattern of the slowdown must surely raise some questions about how durable it is.
然而，正如国际货币基金组织(IMF)及其他机构所警告的，趋势增长放缓现象同样波及到了所有新兴市场——情况可能更严重。虽然原因可能有所不同，但新兴市场扭转这种不受欢迎的发展趋势的难度，却一点不比发达市场小。不仅如此，新兴市场经济放缓的不寻常模式也一定会让人们对放缓将持续多久提出疑问。

In a recent, much-read, analysis, the IMF says that “secular” or trend growth has fallen across the developed markets from 2.25 per cent before the crisis to 1.6 per cent over the next five years, with an even sharper fall among EM countries. Having risen in the decade before the crisis to 7.2 per year — and the rise was in EM countries as a whole, not just China — trend growth since 2008 has slid to 6.5 per cent and is expected to drop over the next five years to 5.2 per cent.
在最近一份广为流传的分析报告中，IMF称，“长期”或趋势增长率在所有发达市场均已下降，从危机前的2.25%降至未来5年间的1.6%，新兴市场国家的下降甚至更加急剧。危机爆发前的10年里，新兴市场国家总体（不只是中国）的趋势增长率曾升至7.2%，但自2008年以来已经降至6.5%，预计在未来5年将降至5.2%。
Although some argue that the problem in the advanced economies is the slowing of technological innovation, the debate there has generally homed in on a demand-side rather than a supply-side explanation. Pessimists such as Lawrence Summers, the former US Treasury secretary and White House chief economic adviser,argue that the long-term real rate of interest has fallen such that monetary policy, which it is hard to loosen below the “zero lower bound” of interest rates at nil, cannot be eased enough to bring the economy back into equilibrium.
尽管有人认为，发达经济体的问题在于技术创新放缓，但那里的辩论通常只关注需求面，而非供应面的解释。美国前财长、白宫首席经济顾问劳伦斯•萨默斯(Lawrence Summers)等悲观论者认为，长期实际利率已经降至如此水平，使货币政策无法被放宽至足以使经济恢复均衡的程度，因为很难将之放松至突破利率为零这一下限。
Hardly anyone believes the same for emerging markets. With the exception of one or two countries such as the Czech Republic and Israel, EM interest rates generally have considerable space to fall and, in any case, higher rates of trend growth and inflation mean that negative real interest rates can be achieved more easily without going below zero.
几乎没有人认为新兴市场也会发生同样的问题。除了捷克与以色列等少数国家，新兴市场的利率通常都有相当大的下降空间，而且无论如何，较高的趋势增长率和通胀率意味着，可以在利率不低于零的情况下更容易地实现实际利率为负。
However, what emerging markets do apparently face — and some argue that they share this problem with advanced economies — is a slowdown in trend growth apparently related to a deceleration in the pace of technological advance and the ability to implement it.
但是，与技术进步速度减慢以及技术应用能力下降明显相关的趋势增长放缓，似乎确实是新兴市场面对的问题（有些人认为这是他们与发达经济体共有的）。
According to the IMF, the pattern of secular slowdown in EMs has been quite different from that in the rich countries. While the latter appeared to be flagging even before the global financial crisis hit in 2008, emerging economies actually accelerated in the decade before the crisis and only hit stronger headwinds thereafter.
IMF认为，新兴市场长期增长放缓的模式与发达国家完全不同。后者甚至在2008年全球金融危机爆发之前就似乎开始萎靡不振，而新兴经济体在危机前的10年实际上都在加速，只是在危机后遇到了较强阻力。
There is something a little puzzling about this conclusion. The weakening since the crisis seems to have resulted not from lower labour supply or investment but from a slowdown in total factor productivity — the ratio of output to all inputs — which aims to capture how well economies absorb and deploy technologies.
这一结论有些令人费解之处。新兴市场自金融危机以来的疲软似乎并非源自劳动力供给或投资减少，而是由于全要素生产率（产出与所有投入的比率）下降。该比率旨在衡量经济体吸收和应用技术的能力。
Few would doubt that reforms to promote faster growth in EMs have been sporadic and unimpressive since the long boom began in the early 2000s. But it seems a little odd that productivity improved rapidly nonetheless in the years before the crisis and slowed across the emerging market world thereafter. True, a prolonged cyclical downturn can itself reduce trend growth by the scarring effects of unemployment and bankruptcies. Yet the EMs in general did relatively well surviving the ravages of the crisis, and grew strongly in the five or six years following.
很少有人会怀疑，推动新兴市场增长加速的改革，自长期繁荣在21世纪初开始以来只是零星的，并不引人注目。但看似有些奇怪的是，新兴市场整体在危机之前的几年里生产率仍然快速提高，而在危机后下降。的确，长期的周期性衰退本身就会拉低趋势增长率，因为失业和破产会带来创伤效应。而新兴市场在从危机造成的破坏中走出方面总体上表现相对较好，而且在危机之后的五、六年里增长强劲。
Nor was the post-crash slowing in productivity growth an effect of faltering investment, which actually increased relative to the existing stock of capital, partly because of counter-cyclical stimulus measures undertaken by EM governments. In theory it could result from a slowing in world trade, since tradable sectors have traditionally been a leading source of productivity improvements. However, the weakness in trade growth seems principally caused by large EMs and particularly China going up the value chain and vertically integrating production processes rather than relying on imported components. That would seem to involve stronger rather than weaker productivity.
后危机时代生产率增长放缓也并非受投资低迷的影响，事实上部分由于新兴市场政府采取的反周期性刺激措施，投资相对于现有资本存量甚至出现了增长。从理论上讲，生产率增长放缓可能是由于世界贸易放缓，因为贸易部门通常是生产率提高的主要来源。然而，贸易增长的疲软似乎主要是由于，大型新兴市场（特别是中国）向价值链上端攀爬，以及垂直整合生产过程，而不再依赖进口组件。这似乎会使生产率提高而非下降。
It is true that trend growth tends to slow the more that countries approach the technology frontier and their expansions decelerate to match that of the rich economies. But emerging markets have started to slow at much lower levels of per capita GDP than rich economies. Moreover, poorer countries within the EM world have slowed just as richer ones have.
没错，当一国更加接近技术边界、其经济减速从而与富裕经济体步调一致时，趋势增长就会放缓。但是新兴市场是在人均GDP水平远低于富裕经济体时，就已经开始放缓。此外，新兴市场中较贫穷的国家也会与较富裕国家一样放缓。
Since TFP is notoriously difficult to calculate, it may well be the case that the slowdown in trend is more apparent than real. Still, it would be intensely foolish to assume that the problem will go away on its own — especially since EMs have some undeniable growth problems still to come, particularly the shrinking of the workforce as a share of the population thanks to demographic transition. In China’s case in particular, investment-to-capital ratios are likely to decline as the economy shifts away from exports and investment and towards consumption.
由于全要素生产率是出了名的难计算，很有可能趋势增长的放缓看上去比实际情况严重。不过，如果假设问题会不治而愈，那就太愚蠢了，尤其是，新兴市场未来还会出现一些不容否认的增长问题，特别是由于人口结构转变造成劳动力在人口中的比例缩小。尤其在中国，随着经济从出口和投资型向消费型转变，投资/资本比率很可能会下滑。
For emerging market governments, then, there seems little alternative than to continue to try to tinker with their economies to promote growth. For advanced economies, the wisdom of attempting structural reform at a time that growth is low and inflation nil or negative is questionable, if it provokes uncertainty that reduces confidence and demand. For emerging markets that have monetary and fiscal room to compensate for such an effect, that caveat is much weaker.
因此，对于新兴市场政府而言，除了继续试着对经济修修补补、促进增长之外，似乎也没什么其他选择了。对于发达经济体，在增长较低、通胀为零或负值的情况下试图进行结构性改革，如果此举引发不确定性、削弱信心和需求，那么其明智性就值得推敲了。对于仍有货币及财政政策空间来弥补此类影响的新兴市场来说，上述警告则远没那么严重。
None of these problems is new. Economists have been worrying over the middle-income trap of economies slowing at relatively low rates of per capita GDP for a long time, and various solutions to increasing productivity have been mooted. But they have been given a new urgency by the apparent confirmation that the trend slowdown is real, that it stretches across the emerging market world, and that — just to give advanced economies a final look-in — that it is taking place amid a global deceleration of output in the medium term.
这些问题都不是新问题。长期以来，经济学家一直担心一些在相对较低的人均GDP水平上放缓的经济体跌入中等收入陷阱，并为提高生产率提出了各种解决办法。但如今他们有了新的紧迫感，这缘于如下情况似乎得到了证实：趋势增长的放缓是现实发生的，它一直蔓延至整个新兴市场世界，并且，它发生在全球中期产出减速之际——这简直是发达经济体最后的受关注机会。