英语学习资料

Economics focusBringing down the house拉低房价The effect of ageing on asset prices may make the rich world’s problems worse 老龄化对于资产价格的影响可能导致富裕世界的问题恶化。

SINCE the bursting of Japan’s asset bubbles in the early 1990s, the country has undergone a long and deflationary process of debt reduction. During this period, Japanese policymakers have attracted criticism from (among others) Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, for their gradualist approach to reflating the economy. The critics’ charge is this: that although the Bank of Japan (BoJ) pioneered many of the policies that the Fed and others have since followed—such as committing to zero interest rates and increasing bank reserves by the alchemy of quantitative easing—the Japanese central bank still did too little, too late.日本从1990年代初的资产泡沫破灭伊始，就进入了一个冗长的通货紧缩、降低负债的过程。

在此时期之内，日本的政策制定者们受到了众多批评，批评者中就包括美联储主席伯南克在内，他指责日本在对经济的渐进主义者式的通货再膨胀。

批评者们的主要指责在于：虽然日本银行（BoJ）作为先锋提出了很多美联储和其他银行效仿的政策——例如制定零利率和通过量化宽松提高银行准备金——如今的日本银行仍然做的太少，也太晚了。

Things look rather different in Japan itself, where some say the problem lies in a lack of demand for loans from the debt-strapped private sector, rather than a lack of supply. This is the hallmark of a “balance-sheet recession”, a term coined by Richard Koo of the Nomura Research Insti tute to describe the process whereby households and companies pay down debts rather than embark on new spending.在日本，事情的发展方向并非看起来那样。

有人说问题在于那些被负债弄得伤痕累累的私营成分借贷需求的不足，而不是供给不足。

这是所谓“资产负债表衰退”的特点，一个由野村综合研究所的Richard Koo创造的称谓，它描述了家庭和公司先付清欠款，而不是开始新消费的过程。

In two speeches* this year, Kiyohiko Nishimura, deputy governor of the BoJ, has developed this line of thinking to help expl ain why Japan’s balance-sheet adjustment has taken so long. Mr Nishimura blames the prolonged slump on ageing, which is furthest advanced in Japan, but is also occurring in many of the world’s biggest economies. His central argument is that ageing depresse s asset prices. That in turn makes deleveraging tougher because debt used to finance assets is harder to pay off without incurring losses. This, he says, may have grim repercussions for America and Europe.Kiyohiko Nishimura是日本银行的副行长。

在今年的两次演讲中，他阐述了为何日本的资产负债表调整用了这么长时间。

Nishimura说这次持续时间很长的衰退过程的罪魁祸首是老龄化。

在世界范围内，日本的老龄化也是首屈一指的，当然，世界上很多其他的大型经济体也存在老龄化现象。

他的主要论点是老龄化降低了资产价格。

而这又使得去杠杆化更困难，因为一度用来供给资产的负债在不遭受损失的情况下，变得更难以付清。

他说，这一事实对于欧美也有糟糕的影响。

The theory behind the link between ageing and asset prices is outlined in a recent working paper by Elod Takats of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). In simple terms, the young and middle-aged save for old age by buying assets, often with borrowed money; the old sell them to pay for retirement. As the working-age population rises—as it did, for instance, after the baby boom—asset prices rocket because of increased demand. As baby-boomers reach retirement, the reverse may happen.在最近的一篇论文中，国际清算银行的Elod Takats概述了老龄化和资产价格联系背后的理论。

简单的说，年轻人和中年人购买资产为了老了以后的日子，此过程常常涉及贷款；而老人则常常出售资产用来支付退休后的开销。

如果工作年龄的人口增长——例如在婴儿潮之后发生的——资产价格就会飙升，因为需求扩大了。

当婴儿潮出生的人接近退休，那么结果就可能是反过来的。

In his paper Mr Takats seeks to quantify this effect. He prefers to look at an international sample rather than data on single countries, because that enables more robust identification of the impact of ageing. He also focuses on house prices rather than financial assets, because they are less likely to be influenced by cross-border capital flows. Mr Takats applies two aspects of demography to BIS house-price data from 22 advanced economies: first, total population; second, the ratio of old people to the working-age population, or the old-age dependency ratio. Between 1970 and 2009, he finds that a 1% rise in GDP per person and a 1% rise in the total population each corresponded to about a 1% rise in real house prices. But a 1% increase in the old-age dependency ratio was associated with a 0.66% drop in real house prices.Takats在他的论文中试图量化这一效应。

他更愿意考察国际样本而不仅是一个国家的数据，因为这样就可以更可靠的识别老龄化的影响。

同时他也更着重考察房地产的价格而不是金融产品的价格，因为前者不容易受到跨境现金流的影响。

Takats将人口学的两个方面应用于国际清算银行关于22个发达国家的房屋价格数据：首先是人口总量；其次是退休年龄人数与工作年龄人数的比值。

在1970年到2009年的数据中，他发现人均GDP 1%的增长，和总人口数1%的增长分别贡献了房屋价格约1%的增长。

然而，养老抚养率1%的上升却和房屋价格0.66%的下降联系在一起。

Using United Nations projections, his analysis suggests that house prices will face strong headwinds in the next 40 years as populations age. American house prices, for example, will rise by about 80 basis points a year less than they would do if you strip out demographic factors, he reckons. For faster-ageing countries such as Japan, Germany and Italy, prices would fall by more than 1% a year, though he notes that other factors may offset the demographic effects and he does not expect a meltdown in prices.根据联合国的预测，他的分析意味着在未来40年里，由于人口老龄化，房屋价格将受到强大阻击。