世行首席經濟學家的僞經濟論

The story was one of the saddest I have read in ages. The World Bank’s chief economist ordered his staff to write more clearly, shut them up whenever they banged on interminably in presentations, and insisted all reports were short and lucid. Instead of being lauded for his bravery Paul Romer was punished like a heretic, and his management duties were taken from him. His story reads like a corporate take on the martyrdom of Joan of Arc.

這是我許久以來讀過的最悲傷的故事了。世界銀行(World Bank)首席經濟學家保羅?羅默(Paul Romer)命令手下以後寫報告要更加清楚明瞭，作報告時一旦開始囉嗦就立刻讓他們閉嘴，還堅持所有報告都必須簡明易懂。但羅默先生非但沒有因爲自己的勇敢贏得稱讚，反而像異端分子一樣受到了懲罰：被剝奪了管理職責。他的故事聽起來簡直就像公司版的“聖女貞德(Joan of Arc)的殉難”。

There is only one quarrel I have with Mr Romer. Among his edicts was to impose a quota on the word “and”, ruling that an official report should contain no more than 2.6 per cent of them. It is a bit odd to persecute the common conjunction, which has the advantages of being useful, clear and short, when there are all those words out there — leverage, deliver, journey, dialogue, platform, learnings or robust and a thousand others — that are none of these things.

我只在一個問題上不滿羅默先生。他的那些命令中，有一條是對“and”這個單詞的使用實行配額限制：官方報告裏，“and”出現的次數不得超過總字數的2.6%。如此壓迫一個常用連詞，委實有些奇怪。“and”可是兼有“有用”、“明確”、“簡短”這幾項優勢，況且還有無數個單詞——leverage、deliver、journey、dialogue、platform、learnings、robust，等等等等——與這幾項優勢毫不沾邊。

Yet when the Stanford Literary Lab published a paper in 2015 analysing World Bank reports, “and” came in for a hiding. The authors noted its use had almost doubled in the previous 70 years and mockingly quoted passages in which ugly, unrelated nouns were slung together with chains of conjunctions.

不過，斯坦福大學文學研究室(Stanford Literary Lab)在2015年發表的一篇論文對世界銀行的報告進行了分析，發現“and”的確沒起到好作用。作者們注意到，過去70年，“and”的使用幾乎翻了一番。他們還嘲弄般地引用了一些段落，裏面大量彆扭、無關的名詞用一串串的連詞綁到了一起。

But is this little word really to blame? Over the past week I have immersed myself in assorted texts, starting with the work of Martin Wolf, who writes at least as clearly as any economist I have come across. Sure enough, in his last column my computer counted an admirably modest 2.5 per cent of ands. Next I studied a column by Janan Ganesh, a man whose prose is widely admired. He did even better, with only 2 per cent.

但真的是這個小小的單詞的責任嗎？過去一週，我埋頭研究了形形色色的文本。首先從馬丁?沃爾夫(Martin Wolf)的文章下手——其行文清楚程度不亞於我讀過的任何一位經濟學家。果然，據我的電腦統計，他的最新一篇專欄裏，“and”的使用頻率僅爲2.5%，令人佩服。下一個，我研究了散文廣受推崇的嘉南?加內什(Janan Ganesh)的一篇專欄。他的成績比沃爾夫還要好，使用頻率僅爲2%。

After that, I widened my net and downloaded King Lear in its entirety, to find the Bard used a mere 19 ands per 1,000. When you consider most of these are stage directions — “Enter Kent and Gloucester” — the true score is lower still.

之後，我擴大了研究範圍，下載了《李爾王》(King Lear)全集，結果發現莎士比亞每1000個單詞裏只用了19個“and”。考慮到其中大部分都是舞臺指示，例如“肯特和葛羅斯特上(Enter Kent and Gloucester)”，實際使用次數要更少。

I was about to conclude that Mr Romer was on to something, but then turned to my own writing and found that in last week’s column I used a shaming 30 ands per 1,000 words. Mr Romer would have despaired.

我正準備得出羅默有一定道理的結論，但又數了數我自己的文章，發現我在上週的專欄裏丟人地用了3%的“and”。羅默先生看了會感到絕望的。