主题：有人看过最近ECONOMIST的一篇关于新经济秩序的文章 -- 远航

In particular, the new ascendancy of the emerging economies has changed the relative returns to labour

and capital. Because these economies' global integration has made labour more abundant, workers in

developed countries have lost some of their bargaining power, which has put downward pressure on real

wages. Workers' share of national income in those countries has fallen to its lowest level for decades,

whereas the share of profits has surged. It seems that Western workers are not getting their full share of

the fruits of globalisation. This is true not just for the lowest-skilled ones but increasingly also for more

highly qualified ones in, say, accountancy and computer programming.

If wages continue to disappoint, there could be a backlash from workers and demands for protection from

low-cost competition. But countries that try to protect jobs and wages through import barriers or

restrictions on offshoring will only hasten their relative decline. The challenge for governments in

advanced economies is to find ways to spread the benefits of globalisation more fairly without reducing

the size of those gains.

The high share of profits and low share of wages in national income are not the only numbers that have

strayed a long way from their historical average. An alarming number of economic variables are currently

way out of line with what conventional economic models would predict. America's current-account deficit

is at a record high, yet the dollar has remained relatively strong. Global interest rates are still historically

low, despite strong growth and heavy government borrowing. Oil prices have tripled since 2002, yet

global growth remains robust and inflation, though rising, is still relatively low. House prices, however,

have been soaring in many countries.

Puzzling it out

This survey will argue that all of these puzzles can be explained by the growing impact of emerging

economies. For instance, low bond yields and the dollar's refusal to plunge are partly due to the way

these countries have been piling up foreign reserves. Likewise, higher oil prices have mostly been caused

by strong demand from developing countries rather than by an interruption of supply, so they have done

less harm to global growth than in the past. And their impact on inflation has been offset by falling prices

of goods exported by emerging economies. This has also made it easier for central banks to achieve their

inflation goals with much lower interest rates than in the past.

All this will require some radical new thinking about economic policy. Governments may need to harness

the tax and benefit system to compensate some workers who lose from globalisation.

Monetary policy also needs to be revamped. Central bankers like to take the credit for the defeat of

inflation, but emerging economies have given them a big helping hand, both by pushing down the prices

of many goods and by restraining wages in developed countries. This has allowed central banks to hold

interest rates at historically low levels. But they have misunderstood the monetary-policy implications of

a positive supply shock. By keeping interest rates too low, they have allowed a build-up of excess

liquidity which has flowed into the prices of assets such as homes, rather than into traditional inflation.

They have encouraged too much borrowing and too little saving. In America the overall result has been

to widen the current-account deficit.

The central banks' mistake has been compounded by the emerging economies' refusal to allow their

exchange rates to rise, piling up foreign-exchange reserves instead. Bizarrely, by financing America's deficit, poor countries are subsidising the world's richest consumers. The opening up of emerging

economies has thus not only provided a supply of cheap labour to the world, it has also offered an

increased supply of cheap capital. But this survey will argue that the developing countries will not be

prepared to go on financing America's massive current-account deficit for much longer.

At some point, therefore, America's cost of capital could rise sharply. There is a risk that the American

economy will face a sharp financial shock and a recession, or an extended period of sluggish growth. This

will slow growth in the rest of the world economy. But America is less important as a locomotive for

global growth than it used to be, thanks to the greater vigour of emerging economies. America's total

imports from the rest of the world last year amounted to only 4% of world GDP. The greater risk to the

world economy is that a recession and falling house prices would add to Americans' existing concerns

about stagnant real wages, creating more support for protectionism. That would be bad both for the old

rich countries and the new emerging stars.

But regardless of how the developed world responds to the emerging giants, their economic power will go

on growing. The rich world has yet to feel the full heat from this new revolution.