看诺贝尔经济学奖得主如何谈投资
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.
耶鲁大学教授罗伯特・席勒(Robert Shiller)长期以来都在从事心理学和经济学的交叉研究，他因很早就准确预测到美国房价是即将破裂的泡沫而名声大噪。他最近与人共同分享了诺贝尔经济学奖，因他对股票和房屋价格波动进行了深入研究，尤其是他研究发现，市场波动幅度如此巨大，已经无法解释为这是理性投资者对基本面变化作出反应的结果。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“诗人兼管道工”的美誉──或者说，一个清晰描绘激进的新愿景并为落实这些愿景而构建基础设施的人──他还帮助开发了新的金融产品和指数。席勒最近会见了《华尔街日报》的特约记者、布鲁金斯学会(the Brookings Institution)哈钦斯财政金融政策中心(the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy)主任戴维・韦塞尔(David Wessel)，他们之间谈话编辑如下：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?
问：贯穿你研究工作的一个主题就是人们往往一而再、再而三地犯错误。这与我在大学里所学的经济学──人都是理性的──大相径庭。您是如何开始思考人们的错误的？
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：当你上大学的时候，经济学界已处于一种反常状态，理性行为的数学模型风行一时，那是一段非正常的时期。我当时博览群书，一心想要回到现实中来。Q: Was there something you saw in reality that led you to this?
问：是不是您在现实中看到了什么，这才促使您做这方面的研究？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。对于泡沫，通常的说法是，市场虽然看起来呈随机走势，但那只是因为市场会对新信息作出反应，而新信息总是不可预见的。在我看来这种说法几乎像一个神话。认为人们能如此高效、慎重并且迅捷地更新信息的说法，也许只适用于1%那么小的一部分人。没法用它对整个市场做出解释。Q: Are bubbles always a bad thing, or do they have some good effects?
问：泡沫始终是件坏事吗？它们有没有某些好的作用？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，这是一个自由的世界，人们可以做自己想做的事，我不是建议要给这些东西戴上紧箍咒。另一方面，人的本性需要刺激，而人得有某种机会意识与兴奋感。我认为利润是重要的刺激因素。从长远眼光来看，很难说泡沫就是十足的坏东西。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年代的互联网泡沫来说吧，那场泡沫所做的就是产生了很多初创企业，其中有些拙劣难撑，有些经营失败，但其它的却幸存了下来，因此这算是坏事吗？我发现很难想象换一种情形会是什么样子。美联储(Federal Reserve)可能还曾试图倚靠泡沫。归根到底，我们的经济政策有点在凭直觉制定，我们的模型不够准确，无法告诉我们正确的政策是什么，因此我在想，如果当初我们抑制了这些泡沫，我们的日子可能更好过一些，不过这一点也无法肯定。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?
问：您会告知投资者他们能够在股市里挑选赢家，还是会对他们说他们不够专业，应该去投资指数基金或别的产品？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：我劝人们去找一名投资顾问，这在我看来是明智之举。问题经常在于，是不是任何人都可能自己选股？我认为是的。这是一场竞争游戏，就像有的人可以在国际象棋锦标赛上出色发挥一样，但如果你没有受过专门训练，我并不建议你去参加象棋锦标赛，否则你会输棋。因此，对大多数人而言，试图在主要投资领域中进行挑选也许是一个错误，因为这是一个投资者过剩的市场，选股很难。你必须面对现实，看看自己到底有多懂行。但如果你在考虑购买房地产然后将其出租，或者重新整修后将其出售，这样的市场里没有那么多专家。对于熟知这座城镇的人来说，这是在做生意，我不会劝人不要那样做。Q: Do you think of yourself as someone smart enough to pick winners in the stock market?
问：您是否认为自己是那种聪明到可以在股市里挑选出赚钱股票的人？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，我的确认为自己有足够的智慧去挑选能赚钱的股票。我一直信奉价值投资。有些股票刚开始谈论，人们就对它们加以各种关注，人人都想对其投资，他们炒高了股价，买那些股票不再合算。其它一些股票让人厌弃，关于它们没有任何消息──它们是生产卫生纸或类似产品的──它们的股价低得离奇。因此，按照常规，你买进低估价股，卖掉高估价股。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?
问：您在看房地产投资的时候，您是否认为世界已经改变了，人们在看到我们所经历的一切之后不再将房地产当成是有把握的投资？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：你指的是认为房地产是优质投资的那种想法。但我想，如果你回顾历史，传统观念并非如此。你在1875年或1950年拦住大街上的一个人说：“我打算买一大堆房子用于投资，你认为怎么样？”我想那人通常会给你这样的回答：“你有把握吗？养房会产生很高的费用，房子也会过时。”如果你能开店将房子都租出去，也许那是一项很好的投资，但只是押注房价会上涨，我无从知道结果。我认为那种想法只是在21世纪初开始生根的。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.
从根本上来说，人们被某某人做了一件了不起的事这种充满人情味的报道所触动，因为那些报道更能产生共鸣，它们能激起人的嫉妒和争强好胜意识。如果我听闻有人买了公寓或房子，转手卖掉后挣了一大笔钱，然后我对自己说我本来也能做到的，那样就会产生情绪上的波动，它会驱使你去做那件事。所以我想那正是21世纪初期在房地产市场和20世纪90年代在股市发生的事情。Q: We've seen an extraordinary period where the gap has widened between winners and losers in society. What should we do about that?
问：我们面对的是社会上成功者和失败者之间差距拉大的一个非常时期，对此我们应该采取什么措施？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：我们应该未雨绸缪，也许是10年或者20年以后，那时的不平等现象可能要严重得多。我们尚不知道情况是否会恶化，我们现在应该有一个应急方案。我的简单想法是提高对富人的征税，这在时下听起来是最不明智的政治动议，但好在你同人们谈论遥远的未来要面临的危险时，他们的态度更为理想主义，更愿意分担责任。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?
问：荣获诺贝尔奖确实保证了您终身的荣誉，但它也给了您某种尊贵的地位：您的所言肯定比别人的话更真实可信。对此您感到担心吗？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：有一点点担心。我认为经济学不是一门精密的科学，它往往被政治化。我在这样的场合接受采访时那种事就发生了。我的感觉是，你期待我对你的每一个问题都给出答案，但也许我应该更多地说“我不知道”。在今年的诺贝尔奖颁奖典礼上，我印象很深的是，（共同获奖人）吉恩・法马(Gene Fama)说了很多“我不知道”。他有点回避媒体，因此我也许可以向他学习学习。
