翻译自2013.9.27日新加坡《联合早报》英文版

              科斯的遗赠  

              作者：安德鲁•沈，肖耿             郭楠 译  

最近，罗纳德•H•科斯——新制度经济学之父去世了。这对于那些探索有效构架以理解前进中的中国经济改革的中国经济学家来说，是一个巨大损失。随着中国迈入高收入水平国家行列, 科斯的遗产——他关于公司、金融机构、国家在市场形成和推动经济发展方面的作用的见解——将显得更为关键。

科斯以其两篇具有开创性的论文改变了经济学家们关于制度对经济的影响力的看法。他1937年的论文《公司的性质》将“交易成本”的概念引入关于公司结构、功能、边界的讨论。他1960年的论文《社会成本问题》建议政府通过明晰产权治理经济活动的消极的外部性，如环境污染、交通拥堵等。

晚年，科斯将关注点转移到资本主义和市场经济在中国的出现。据科斯的观点，从1979年中国改革开放以来，中国已经开始了制度演进的实时实验。而这制度演进是由中央政府、地方政府和企业共同推动的。

去年一个中国的研究团队（包括我们）发起了一项关于广东佛山的案例研究。这项案例研究的核心正是制度演进。佛山是一个临近广州的拥有700万人口的城市，位于珠江三角洲的核心位置。随着案例研究结论的得出，佛山正是印证科斯观点的最理想的例子。

由于佛山临近香港，他稳固地嵌入全球供应链并驱动佛山市的名义GDP迅速增长，从1978年约13亿元人民币到去年6709亿元人民币。私营部门为佛山的GDP贡献比例达60%以上。这些私营企业主要生产家用电器、机械设备、建筑材料、纺织品、食品。佛山还是全球最大的灯具和家具批发中心，其产品向全世界出口。

据中国社科院的调查，佛山是中国最具竞争力的地级市，在中国城市竞争力总榜排名第八。这部分归功于当地政府在市、区、镇各层级的制度创新。这种制度创新使得佛山重新开创了1979年以前早已湮灭的市场经济，并得以应对迅速的城市化、工业化、全球化。

佛山的发展为中国现如今面临的核心问题提供了重要思路。这个核心问题是：如何将一种低附加值的以制造业为基础的经济转换为一种高附加值的以创新推动的经济形式。虽然前者带来了30年的成功（在GDP增长方面），它也带来了大量风险和失衡——包括环境恶化、社会不公、债务过度、工业产能过剩和政府机构臃肿。佛山的经验证明，城市能在矫正上述失衡和推动中国经济转型方面发挥轴心作用。

从传统上来说，中国的城市是一个围绕集市形成的城墙内的权力中心。确实，构成汉语词汇“城市”的两个字“城”和“市”分别代表城墙和集市。这是一个贴切的并列词组，如今表现为一种在城市内部和城市之间的竞争关系—— 政府主导建立强大的市场而产生的集体主义行为与私营部门之间的竞争。

在基础设施建设方面，中国一些最具活力的城市——如北京、上海、佛山——已经与一些西方的大都市（如巴黎、芝加哥）程度相当。但是缺少了“软件”的应用，“硬件”是低效的。换句话说，正如科斯所暗示的，“软件”是指有效的产权构造，是指无论法律、程序还是行政管理都要支撑高效、公平、创新的市场。

全球化带来的消费方式和偏好的趋同使得世界主要城市为世界市场专业化生产成为可能。但是，由于政治、社会、经济体制通过本土历史和文化表现出的差异性，公民行为及态度仍然存在较大差别。尽管国家间的差异化仍然存在，政府有责任保持市场的平稳运行。换言之，全球化的市场需要城市作为推进器为之服务；城市反过来需要政府协调供应链从而有效传递市场授予的公共产品。

中国过去的经济增长必然依靠至少四类供应链的协调：一是全球生产供应链（很大程度上由私营部门带动）；二是物流供应链（由国有企业带动）；三是财务供应链（主要由国有银行构成）；四是政府服务供应链。像佛山这样的城市基本得益于上述网络的有效协调。但是还有第五条供应链——人才供应链——很大程度上被忽视了。除非城市能吸引到最优秀的人才，否则城市很难发挥它们的潜力。

根据科斯的分析，中国的发展需要聚焦于本土思维的政府与全球思维的市场间的复杂的相互作用。一个极重要的教训是，与自由市场思想体系相反，科斯认为更少的政府管制并不意味着必然化的更多的市场。更确切地说，扩张的市场需要强有力的政府和更有指向性的方法——例如发展产权结构、建设人才资源库、实施用以支撑高质量增长的宏观经济政策。

无论资本主义还是社会主义都没有充分揭示如何同时获得有效地GDP增长、形成不排斥不歧视的社会并保持生态的可持续性。如果中国能应用科斯的制度经济学的见解构建出更有效的发展框架，中国将取得关键性的平衡。

注：安德鲁•沈（中文名：沈联涛）是香港经纶国际经济研究院的院长，香港证券及期货事务监察委员会前主席。肖耿是港经纶国际经济研究院的导师。

（我对这篇文章非常有兴趣，因此尽管已经有译文，我还是没看译稿自己翻译了一遍，现把原文和联合早报网站译文附上。）

科斯：1960年《社会成本问题》1959或1960《联邦传播委员会》

张五常：《经济解释》， 1970《合约结构与非私产理论》

科斯与中国

（Coase’s Chinese Legacy）

 The recent death of Ronald H. Coase, the founding father of new institutional economics, is a great loss to Chinese economists who are seeking an effective framework for understanding China’s ongoing economic transformation. His legacy – insights into the role of firms, financial institutions, and the state in shaping the market and driving economic development – will prove crucial as China works to achieve high-income status.

 With two seminal papers, Coase changed the way economists view institutions’ impact on an economy. His 1937 paper “The Nature of the Firm” introduced the concept of transaction costs into discussions of a firm’s structure, function, and limitations. And his 1960 paper “The Problem of Social Cost” proposed that the state could manage the negative externalities, such as pollution or traffic, of economic activities through well-defined property rights.

 In his final years, Coase shifted his focus to the emergence of capitalism and the creation of markets in China. According to Coase, since the period of reform and opening up began in 1979, China has been a living experiment in institutional evolution, shaped simultaneously by the central government and by local governments and enterprises.

 This evolution is at the center of a case study of Foshan – a city of seven million people located near Guangzhou, at the heart of the Pearl River Delta – launched last year by a team of Chinese researchers (of which we were a part). As it turns out, Foshan may well be the ideal example to test Coase’s views.

 Given Foshan’s proximity to Hong Kong, it is firmly embedded in global supply chains – a fact that has helped to drive rapid nominal GDP growth, from roughly ¥1.3 billion in 1978 to ¥670.9 billion ($109.7 billion) last year. The private sector – focused on the production of home appliances, machinery equipment, construction materials, textiles, and food – accounts for more than 60% of Foshan’s GDP. Foshan is also home to the world’s largest wholesale lighting and furniture markets, and its products are exported internationally.

 According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Foshan is China’s most competitive prefecture-level city, and its eighth most competitive city overall, owing partly to institutional innovations by local governments at the township, district, and prefecture levels. These innovations enabled Foshan to create markets that were largely defunct before 1979, while coping with rapid urbanization, industrialization, and globalization.

 Foshan’s development offers important insight into the core problem that China is now facing: how to transform a low value-added, manufacturing-based economy into a high value-added, innovation-fueled economy. While the previous model brought 30 years of success in terms of GDP growth, it generated considerable risks and imbalances – including environmental degradation, social inequities, excessive debt, industrial over-capacity, and a bloated state sector. As Foshan’s experience demonstrates, cities can play a pivotal role in correcting these imbalances and driving China’s economic transition.

 The Chinese city evolved as a walled-in seat of power centered around a marketplace. Indeed, the two characters that comprise the Chinese word for city (城市) mean “castle” (城) and “market” (市) – an apt juxtaposition, which endures today in the form of the relationship between collective state-led action to build strong markets and private-sector competition within and among cities.

 In terms of physical infrastructure, China’s most dynamic cities – such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Foshan – already resemble Western metropolises like Paris and Chicago. But this “hardware” is inefficient without the “software” needed to manage it – namely, as Coase suggested, an efficient property-rights infrastructure (the laws, procedures, and administrative capacity needed to support efficient, fair, and innovative markets).

 The convergence of consumer lifestyles and preferences driven by globalization has enabled the world’s major cities to specialize production for global markets. But, given regional differences in political, social, and economic arrangements – often reflecting the particularities of local history and culture – significant divergences in citizens’ attitudes remain. Responsibility for ensuring the smooth functioning of markets despite these disparities falls to the state. In other words, markets are global networks, which depend on cities to serve as hubs; cities, in turn, require state coordination of supply chains to deliver market-enabling public goods effectively.

 China’s growth story has entailed the orchestration of at least four supply chains: a global production supply chain, run largely by the private sector; a logistics supply chain, run by state-owned enterprises; a finance supply chain, mainly comprising state-owned banks; and a government-services supply chain. Cities like Foshan have benefited substantially from the effective coordination of these networks. But a fifth supply chain – that of human talent – has largely been neglected, and cities cannot achieve their potential unless they can attract the best human talent.

 A Coasian analysis of China’s development would center on the complex interaction between the locally minded state and the globally minded market, with the key lesson being that, contrary to free-market ideology, less government does not necessarily mean more market. Rather, an expanding market needs a strong government, but with a more targeted approach that emphasizes, for example, developing the property-rights infrastructure, building the human talent pool, and implementing macroeconomic policies that support high-quality growth.

 Neither capitalism nor socialism has fully revealed how to achieve efficient GDP growth, an inclusive society, and ecological sustainability simultaneously. If China applies Coase’s institutional insights to develop an effective development framework, it may well manage to strike this crucial balance.

 (Andrew Sheng, President of the Fung Global Institute, is a former chairman of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission. Xiao Geng is Director of Research at the Fung Global Institute.)