看諾貝爾經濟學獎得主如何談投資大綱
Yale University professor best known for his early, accurate prediction that U.S. house prices were a bubble just waiting to burst, has long worked at the intersection of psychology and economics. He recently shared the Nobel in economics for insights into why prices of stocks and houses fluctuate as they do, particularly work showing that markets move too much to be explained by rational investors responding to changing fundamentals.
耶魯大學教授羅伯特・席勒(Robert Shiller)長期以來都在從事心理學和經濟學的交叉研究，他因很早就準確預測到美國房價是即將破裂的泡沫而名聲大噪。他最近與人共同分享了諾貝爾經濟學獎，因他對股票和房屋價格波動進行了深入研究，尤其是他研究發現，市場波動幅度如此巨大，已經無法解釋爲這是理性投資者對基本面變化作出反應的結果。
Once lauded as both a 'poet and plumber' or, someone who articulates radical new visions and installs the infrastructure needed to implement them-Shiller also has helped develop new financial products and indexes. He recently met with David Wessel, a contributing correspondent to the Journal and director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution. Their edited remarks follow:
席勒曾享有“詩人兼管道工”的美譽──或者說，一個清晰描繪激進的新願景併爲落實這些願景而構建基礎設施的人──他還幫助開發了新的金融產品和指數。席勒最近會見了《華爾街日報》的特約記者、布魯金斯學會(the Brookings Institution)哈欽斯財政金融政策中心(the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy)主任戴維・韋塞爾(David Wessel)，他們之間談話編輯如下：
Q: One theme that runs through your work is that people tend to make mistakes over and over again. That's quite different than what I learned in college economics-that people are rational. How did you start thinking about people's mistakes?
問：貫穿你研究工作的一個主題就是人們往往一而再、再而三地犯錯誤。這與我在大學裏所學的經濟學──人都是理性的──大相徑庭。您是如何開始思考人們的錯誤的？
A: When you went to college, the economics profession had reached an unnatural state. Mathematical models of rational behavior became the rage. It was just an abnormal time. I was reading more widely and wanting to come back to reality.
答：當你上大學的時候，經濟學界已處於一種反常狀態，理性行爲的數學模型風行一時，那是一段非正常的時期。我當時博覽羣書，一心想要回到現實中來。
Q: Was there something you saw in reality that led you to this?
問：是不是您在現實中看到了什麼，這才促使您做這方面的研究？
A: Well, bubbles. The story about bubbles was that the markets appear random, but that's only because markets respond to new information and new information is always unpredictable. It seemed to be almost like a mythology to me. The idea that people are so optimizing, so calculating and so ready to update their information, that's true of maybe a tiny fraction of 1 percent of people. It's not going to explain the whole market.
答：嗯，是泡沫。對於泡沫，通常的說法是，市場雖然看起來呈隨機走勢，但那只是因爲市場會對新信息作出反應，而新信息總是不可預見的。在我看來這種說法幾乎像一個神話。認爲人們能如此高效、慎重並且迅捷地更新信息的說法，也許只適用於1%那麼小的一部分人。沒法用它對整個市場做出解釋。
Q: Are bubbles always a bad thing, or do they have some good effects?
問：泡沫始終是件壞事嗎？它們有沒有某些好的作用？
A: First of all, it's a free world and people can do what they want. I'm not proposing we put the straightjacket on these things. The other thing is that human nature needs stimulation and people have to have some sense of opportunity and excitement. I think profits are an important motivator. In the long run, it's hard to say that bubbles are really bad.
答：首先，這是一個自由的世界，人們可以做自己想做的事，我不是建議要給這些東西戴上緊箍咒。另一方面，人的本性需要刺激，而人得有某種機會意識與興奮感。我認爲利潤是重要的刺激因素。從長遠眼光來看，很難說泡沫就是十足的壞東西。
Take the Internet bubble in the 1990s. What that did was generate a lot of start-ups, some of them foolish, some of them failed, but others survived, so is it a bad thing? I find it hard to think what the alternative would be. We could have had a Federal Reserve that tried to lean against that. Ultimately, our policies in economics are somewhat intuitive and our models are not accurate enough to tell us what the right policy is, so I'm thinking we might have been better off if we tamed these bubbles, but there is no way to be sure.
就拿1990年代的互聯網泡沫來說吧，那場泡沫所做的就是產生了很多初創企業，其中有些拙劣難撐，有些經營失敗，但其它的卻倖存了下來，因此這算是壞事嗎？我發現很難想象換一種情形會是什麼樣子。美聯儲(Federal Reserve)可能還曾試圖倚靠泡沫。歸根到底，我們的經濟政策有點在憑直覺制定，我們的模型不夠準確，無法告訴我們正確的政策是什麼，因此我在想，如果當初我們抑制了這些泡沫，我們的日子可能更好過一些，不過這一點也無法肯定。
Q: Do you tell investors that they can pick winners in the stock market, or do you tell them they're not expert enough and that they should go to index funds or other products?
問：您會告知投資者他們能夠在股市裏挑選贏家，還是會對他們說他們不夠專業，應該去投資指數基金或別的產品？
A: I tell people to get an investment adviser; that makes sense to me. The question is often whether it's possible for anyone to pick stocks, and I think it is. It's a competitive game. It's like some people can play in a chess tournament really well, but I'm not recommending you go into a chess tournament if you are not trained in that, or you will lose. So for most people, trying to pick among major investments might be a mistake because it's an overpopulated market. It's hard. You have to be realistic about how savvy you are. But if you are thinking about buying real estate and renting it out, fixing it up and selling it, that's the kind of market that's less populated by experts. And for someone who knows the town, that's doing business, I'm not going to tell someone not to do that.
答：我勸人們去找一名投資顧問，這在我看來是明智之舉。問題經常在於，是不是任何人都可能自己選股？我認爲是的。這是一場競爭遊戲，就像有的人可以在國際象棋錦標賽上出色發揮一樣，但如果你沒有受過專門訓練，我並不建議你去參加象棋錦標賽，否則你會輸棋。因此，對大多數人而言，試圖在主要投資領域中進行挑選也許是一個錯誤，因爲這是一個投資者過剩的市場，選股很難。你必須面對現實，看看自己到底有多懂行。但如果你在考慮購買房地產然後將其出租，或者重新整修後將其出售，這樣的市場裏沒有那麼多專家。對於熟知這座城鎮的人來說，這是在做生意，我不會勸人不要那樣做。Q: Do you think of yourself as someone smart enough to pick winners in the stock market?
問：您是否認爲自己是那種聰明到可以在股市裏挑選出賺錢股票的人？
A: Well, I actually think I'm smart enough to pick winners. I've always believed in value investing. Some stocks just get talked about, and people pay all sorts of attention to them, and everyone wants to invest in them, and they bid the price up and they are no longer a good buy. Other stocks, they are boring. There is no news about them-they are making toilet paper or something like that-and their price gets too low. So as a matter of routine, you buy low-priced stocks and sell high-priced stocks.
答：嗯，我的確認爲自己有足夠的智慧去挑選能賺錢的股票。我一直信奉價值投資。有些股票剛開始談論，人們就對它們加以各種關注，人人都想對其投資，他們炒高了股價，買那些股票不再合算。其它一些股票讓人厭棄，關於它們沒有任何消息──它們是生產衛生紙或類似產品的──它們的股價低得離奇。因此，按照常規，你買進低估價股，賣掉高估價股。
Q: When you look at housing, do you think that the world has changed in that people don't regard it as a sure-thing investment because of what we went through?
問：您在看房地產投資的時候，您是否認爲世界已經改變了，人們在看到我們所經歷的一切之後不再將房地產當成是有把握的投資？
A: You referred to an idea that housing is a great investment. But I think if you go back in history that was not the conventional wisdom. You stop a man on the street in 1875 or 1950 and say, 'I'm going to buy a bunch of houses and invest in them. What do you think?' I think the usual response the guy would give is, 'Are you sure about that? There's a lot of maintenance. They're going to go out of style.' If you can create a business renting them out, maybe it's a great investment. But just betting on their price going up, I don't know. I think that was an idea that took hold particularly during the early years of the 21st century.
答：你指的是認爲房地產是優質投資的那種想法。但我想，如果你回顧歷史，傳統觀念並非如此。你在1875年或1950年攔住大街上的一個人說：“我打算買一大堆房子用於投資，你認爲怎麼樣？”我想那人通常會給你這樣的回答：“你有把握嗎？養房會產生很高的費用，房子也會過時。”如果你能開店將房子都租出去，也許那是一項很好的投資，但只是押注房價會上漲，我無從知道結果。我認爲那種想法只是在21世紀初開始生根的。
Ultimately, people are motivated by human-interest stories about somebody who did something amazing because those stories are more resonant, they create a sense of envy and competitiveness. If I've heard stories about someone who bought condos or houses and flipped them and made a huge amount of money, and I think to myself I could have done that, it generates emotional turmoil that drives you to do it. So I'm thinking that's kind of what was happening in the housing market in the early 2000s and in the stock market in the 1990s.
從根本上來說，人們被某某人做了一件了不起的事這種充滿人情味的報道所觸動，因爲那些報道更能產生共鳴，它們能激起人的嫉妒和爭強好勝意識。如果我聽聞有人買了公寓或房子，轉手賣掉後掙了一大筆錢，然後我對自己說我本來也能做到的，那樣就會產生情緒上的波動，它會驅使你去做那件事。所以我想那正是21世紀初期在房地產市場和20世紀90年代在股市發生的事情。
Q: We've seen an extraordinary period where the gap has widened between winners and losers in society. What should we do about that?
問：我們面對的是社會上成功者和失敗者之間差距拉大的一個非常時期，對此我們應該採取什麼措施？
A: We should start preparing for a day, maybe 10 or 20 years in the future, when inequality may be much worse. We don't yet know whether it's going to be worse. We should have a contingency plan now. The simple idea I have is raising the taxes on the rich, which sounds like the most politically inexpedient move right now, but the nice thing is that when you talk to people about risks of the distant future, they are more idealistic and more sharing in their attitudes.
答：我們應該未雨綢繆，也許是10年或者20年以後，那時的不平等現象可能要嚴重得多。我們尚不知道情況是否會惡化，我們現在應該有一個應急方案。我的簡單想法是提高對富人的徵稅，這在時下聽起來是最不明智的政治動議，但好在你同人們談論遙遠的未來要面臨的危險時，他們的態度更爲理想主義，更願意分擔責任。
Q: Winning the Nobel Prize does guarantee the first line of your obit, but it also gives you a kind of exalted status: What you say must be more true than what other people say. Do you worry about that at all?
問：榮獲諾貝爾獎確實保證了您終身的榮譽，但它也給了您某種尊貴的地位：您的所言肯定比別人的話更真實可信。對此您感到擔心嗎？
A: A little bit. I think that economics is not an exact science. It tends to be politicized. It happens when I'm interviewed in occasions like this, I have a sense that you expect me to come up with answers for every one of your questions. But maybe I should say, 'I don't know' more often. At this year's Nobel ceremony, I was impressed that [co-winner] Gene Fama said 'I don't know' a lot. He kind of avoids the media, so maybe I could learn a lesson from him.
答：有一點點擔心。我認爲經濟學不是一門精密的科學，它往往被政治化。我在這樣的場合接受採訪時那種事就發生了。我的感覺是，你期待我對你的每一個問題都給出答案，但也許我應該更多地說“我不知道”。在今年的諾貝爾獎頒獎典禮上，我印象很深的是，（共同獲獎人）吉恩・法馬(Gene Fama)說了很多“我不知道”。他有點回避媒體，因此我也許可以向他學習學習。
