Lunch with the FT: It’s the humanity, stupid
By Tim Harford

Published: June 16 2006 10:43 | Last updated: June 16 2006 10:43

The Chicago shopping mall’s parking lot is packed. The white-haired grandfather pulls into a space with a 30-minute limit, not nearly long enough for the leisurely lunch we have planned. “We should be fine here. I don’t think they check that carefully,” he explains in gentle but distinctively Brooklyn tones. I look across at him and ask, “Was that a rational crime?” He doesn’t hesitate for a second. “Yes it was.”

The theory of rational crime is one of half a dozen explosive ideas that won Gary Becker the Nobel prize in economics. The theory struck Becker 40 years ago, when he was running late to examine a doctoral student. With no time to find a free space, he quickly weighed the cost of paying for parking against the risks of being fined for parking illegally. By the time he arrived at the examination, the then-unfashionable idea that criminals would respond to the risks and costs of punishment was taking shape in his mind. The unfortunate student was immediately asked to discuss. (He passed, and Becker did not get a ticket.)

Becker’s approach to problems does not seem to have changed, with costs and benefits never far from his mind. As we head towards La Petite Folie, a French restaurant concealed inside the mall, he devotes some time to explaining the rationale behind choosing this particular eating place. He had originally suggested the University of Chicago’s Quadrangle Club, where I would have been able to observe Becker’s academic colleagues in their natural environment. In the end, though, the quality of the food outweighed all other factors: “I thought we should at least have a decent meal,” the professor says.

Becker introduces me to the restaurant’s proprietor, Mary, gives me the choice of seats and politely offers advice on the menu. Dressed in jacket and tie, and the soul of unforced politeness, his gentlemanly behaviour could hardly be more at odds with the horror his ideas have often produced. He’s not worried by his reputation as bogeyman economist.

“My whole philosophy has been to be conventional in things such as dress and so on. But when it comes to ideas, I’ll be willing to stick my neck out: I can take criticism if I think I’m right.”

He does think he’s right, and the criticism has never been far away. Initially, it came from other economists. Frank Knight, a founder of the so-called Chicago school of economics, persuaded a journal editor not to publish Becker’s early paper on the incentives behind how democracies reach decisions. (The subject later became “public choice theory” and produced a Nobel prize for another economist, James Buchanan.) Becker’s PhD thesis was on discrimination - how to measure it and what effects it might have on the wealth of both the discriminators and their victims. It was thought to be no fit subject for an economist, and the Chicago faculty persuaded a sociologist with little interest in Becker to oversee his work. Becker later struggled to publish his book, The Economics of Discrimination.

The battles for acceptance went on for many years. Before he was 30, Becker presented to the American Economic Association his then-new idea of “human capital” (that people would invest in their own education as they might invest in shares, mindful of the rate of return). He recalls that the response was “absolutely outraged”. Now, he says, “it’s hard to believe human capital was once controversial. For politicians, if they don’t mention the term human capital they don’t win.”

We have already asked the waiter to give us more time as the conversation ranges from London’s congestion charge (”they’ve done what I’ve always said should be done”); nuclear energy (Becker is in favour) and the pros and cons of blogging. Becker is also curious to hear from me about London and journalism.

The waiter tries again after a decent interval. Becker chooses the scallops and recommends seafood, but I am tempted by the steak. I press him to have some wine. “I’ll have a glass. No more than a glass for me.” Then we discuss whether to have French or Italian mineral water. I vote Italian. He concurs: “I like Italy. I like the Italians. They’re easy.” It is perhaps the only time in our conversation that he chuckles.

Becker wants a clear head for tennis that afternoon. He is 75 and looks it, with fine white hair and translucent, heavily lined skin, but he moves like a younger man. When I arrived at his home to take him up on his offer of a lift to the restaurant, I could see his silhouette coming down the stairs at a fair clip. He drives confidently. In the summer, he moves his work to Cape Cod and often swims in the ocean. Becker has always loved sport, but that, and his family, seem to be his only distraction from work. “I don’t like small talk too much, so I don’t try to get involved in that.” It is clear from even a few minutes conversation that what really motivates Becker is the world of ideas.

If Becker has a single guiding principle, it is that the economic way of looking at behaviour applies more broadly than originally thought, and people make rational choices about crime, marriage, parenthood, education, even drug addiction. Economists have been suspicious of his call for a much broader set of values to be taken into account, while non-economists accuse him of reducing emotional decisions to monetary ones. I suggest to him that this is a straightforward misunderstanding and most people have not realised that economics is not the study of money.

“You’re absolutely right. People have completely misunderstood, probably never read anything I wrote. Obviously money is important, but what I mostly study is non-monetary - discrimination, marriage. Nowhere in anything I’ve ever written does it say that people get married mainly or solely for money.”

All the same, Becker’s ideas can seem cold, even to other economists. He gives the impression of being an extremely cerebral man. “I have some novelist friends who will notice every individual characteristic. I’m very poor at that. But I think I’m a pretty good observer - in my mind - of social and economic behaviour. I think I get a lot of my stuff from that talent.”

And so we discuss the rationality of giving money to beggars despite trying to avoid them. Then he outlines a new model of suicide that he’s working on with his friend and fellow blogger, Judge Richard Posner, the economist and legal scholar. The two are trying to distinguish between a failed suicide and a successful cry for help. He shows no inclination to soften his analysis with the slightest hint of political correctness. When we discuss my “Dear Economist” column - in which his work appears frequently - he ignores my suggestion that the column is half in jest. “Some people might say it’s far-fetched. But I like the applications I’ve seen.”

After initial fierce resistance within the profession, and equally fierce support from Chicago school greats such as Milton Friedman, Becker is now regarded as one of the most influential economists of the 20th century - arguably, the most influential of all. Becker’s colleague at Chicago, Steven Levitt, recently studied which economists were inspiring empirical research in the leading journals. Becker was ahead by a landslide in the raw number of citations, and unlike rivals who tended to produce just one or two famous ideas, he has published influential papers every decade for 50 years.

“There was a sea change. I began to notice it in the 1970s and 1980s. A lot of the younger people coming out of Harvard, MIT and Stanford were very interested in what I was doing, even though their faculty were mainly - not entirely - opposed to the sort of stuff I was doing.”

Becker doesn’t show any sign of slowing down. Along with the paper on suicide, he has been working on the individual response to the fear of terrorism, the macroeconomic impacts of larger populations, and why evolution might produce people who always compare their wealth to that of others. He teaches more classes at Chicago than he’s ever done, and although he recently stopped writing his monthly column for Business Week after nearly 20 years, he now writes an essay every week on a blog with Posner. Posner was once a possibility for the US Supreme Court (”I don’t think there’s anyone, including [Chief Justice] Roberts, on the Supreme Court who’s anywhere near the equal of Posner”) but Becker now tips him for a Nobel prize in economics.

It is 14 years since Becker himself was roused from a flu-induced slumber by the call from Sweden. The prize - long-predicted by then - provoked two concerns. One was that his work would stop making people feel uneasy. “I’m a little bothered by that. It’s fine to have it accepted and I’m gratified by that. But I also think you’ve got to try to keep doing work that’s controversial, that’s not accepted.”

The second worry was that, like most Nobel laureates, Becker would stop doing serious work. The possibility seems remote. “I still like what I’m doing. That’s what keeps me going. Whether I’m as good at it as I used to be is open to question, but I still think I have ideas, I can make contributions, I think some of them are interesting and I enjoy doing it. I like having a busy schedule, I’ve been blessed with a fair bit of energy, I can manage all these things, and it’s my main interest in life, my work - so it can continue.”

Becker has eaten slowly, more interested in the conversation than the food. We skip dessert and coffee, although we’ve been sitting together for nearly two hours. As we get up to leave, a young fan approaches Becker to profess his admiration for his columns in Business Week. Becker responds graciously before holding the door open for me to leave the restaurant.

Then, despite my protestations, he waits on the sidewalk with me until my taxi arrives. He shakes my hand, walks away, but turns back immediately to help me as someone else tries to take the cab. Order restored, with a smile, he strolls off into the sunny Chicago afternoon.

La Petite Folie, Chicago

1 x steak with gratin potatoes

1 x scallops with capellini

2 x glasses wine

1 x bottle San Pellegrino water

Total: $61.03

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

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解读“人性”的经济学家

作者：英国《金融时报》专栏作家提姆·哈福德(Tim Harford)
2006年6月28日 星期三


芝
加哥这家大型购物中心的停车场已经停满了汽车。这位白发老人把车停在一个限时30分钟的车位里，这点时间远远不够我们从容不迫地吃那顿约好的午饭。“我们停这儿应该没事儿。他们不会查得那么仔细，”他向我解释道，声音柔和，但带有明显的布鲁克林口音。我望着他，问道：“这算是一种理性犯罪吗？”他毫不迟疑地说：“是的。”

“理性犯罪”(rational crime)这一理论，是加里·贝克尔(Gary Becker)荣膺诺贝尔经济学奖的6大爆炸性理论之一。40年前的一天，贝克尔去给一个博士生考试的时候迟到了，此时，上述理论闯入了他的脑海。他当时没时间去寻找免费停车的地方，于是迅速权衡了一下付费停车的成本和因违章停车而被罚款的风险。当他到达考场的时候，那个当时还不流行的概念——犯罪分子将根据惩罚的风险和成本做出反应——在他的心目中成形了。贝克尔立即要求那位不幸的学生与他讨论这一问题。（那位学生通过了考试，而且贝克也没有因违章停车而收到罚单。）

成本与收益从未远离他的头脑

贝克尔处理问题的方法似乎没有发生改变，成本与收益从未远离他的头脑。当我们朝着购物中心内的法国餐厅La Petite Folie走过去的时候，他花了些时间，来解释选择这家餐厅背后所蕴含的基本原理。他最初建议去芝加哥大学的方庭俱乐部(Quadrangle Club)，我可以实地观察贝克尔的那些学院同仁们。但最后，食物的质量超越了其它因素，这位教授说：“我想，我们至少应该吃一顿像样的饭。”

贝克尔把我引荐给餐厅老板玛丽(Mary)，让我选择座位，并礼貌地向我推荐菜单上的食品。他身穿夹克，系着领带，加上那份自然而然的优雅，那种绅士般的举止，与他经常冒出来的可怕想法，简直是不协调至极。“ 另类经济学家”的名声并未使他闷闷不乐。

“在穿著等方面，我的观念一直都很传统。但是，一旦涉及思想领域，我乐于标新立异：如果我认为自己是对的，我能够承受批评。”

他确实认为自己是对的，而那些批评也从未远离过他。起初，批评来自于其他经济学家。法兰克·奈特(Frank Knight)是所谓芝加哥经济学派的一位创始人，他曾劝说一家报纸的编辑，不要出版贝克尔早期有关“民主制度决策的背后动机”的论文。（这一课题后来变成了“公共选择理论”，并为另外一位经济学家，詹姆士·布坎南(James Buchanan)，带来了诺贝尔奖。）贝克尔的博士论文与歧视有关——如何对其进行衡量，以及歧视可能给歧视者和被歧视者的财富造成的影响。有人认为，对于经济学家而言，这不是一个合适的题目，校方说服了一位对贝克尔不感兴趣的社会学家来评审他的作品。后来，贝克尔几经艰难，才发表了他的著作《歧视经济学》(The Economics of Discrimination)。

首创“人力资本”概念

贝克尔奋斗多年，才获得世人的承认。在30岁以前，贝克尔曾向美国经济学会(American Economic Association)提出“人力资本”(human capital)的概念（即人们为了获取回报，会像投资股票一样，投资于自身的教育），这个概念在当时还很新颖。他回忆道，当时学会的反应是“怒不可遏”。他说道：“现在很难相信，人力资本这一概念曾经备受争议。对于政界人士而言，要是他们不提人力资本这个术语，他们就无法获胜。”

我们已经要求侍者多给我们一些时间，因为我们的谈话范围很广，从伦敦的汽车进城费（“他们做了我一直在主张的事”）、核能（贝克尔赞成使用）到撰写博客的利弊。贝克尔对我谈到的伦敦和新闻行业也同样感到好奇。

间隔了很长一段时间，侍者再次尝试让我们点餐。贝克尔点了扇贝，并向我推荐海鲜，但是牛排对我更有吸引力。我劝他喝点葡萄酒。“我就喝一杯吧，不能超过一杯。”然后，我们商量点法国矿泉水还是意大利矿泉水。我建议点意大利矿泉水。他表示同意：“我喜欢意大利，喜欢意大利人。他们很自在。”这或许是我们谈话中，他唯一一次笑出声来。

贝克尔希望保持清醒的头脑，因为当天下午他还要打网球。他今年75岁，看上去也是这个岁数，有一头漂亮的白发，和皱纹很深的半透明皮肤，但他的举止看上去更年轻。当我到了他家，搭他的车去餐厅时，我看到他步履轻盈地走下楼梯。他驾车很自信。在夏天，他搬到科德角工作，经常在海里游泳。贝克尔一直热爱体育运动，似乎也只有运动和家庭能够分散他对工作的注意力。“我不太喜欢清谈，因此我不会尝试参与闲聊。”哪怕只是几分钟的谈话，也能清楚地表明：真正让贝克感兴趣的，是创意的世界。

用经济学原理来解读人的行为

如果说贝克尔有一条指导原则的话，那就是用经济学原理来解读人的行为，其适用范围要比最初设想的更为广泛，人们在犯罪、婚姻 、亲子、教育、甚至吸毒等问题上做出理性的选择。他呼吁建立一套更广泛的价值观，对此，经济学家们持怀疑态度，而非经济学家们指责他将情感决策“简化”为货币决策。我向他提出，这完全是一种误解，大多数人并未意识到经济学并不是研究金钱的学问。

“你说得很对。人们完全误解了我的著作，也许从未读过它们。显然，金钱很重要，但我研究的大多是非金钱的主题——歧视、婚姻。在我的著作中，没有一处表示，人们结婚主要（或完全）是为了金钱。”

即便如此，贝克尔的观点可能看起来有些冷酷，即使在其他经济学家眼里也是如此。他给人的印象是一个极为理智的人。“我有一些写小说的朋友，他们会注意人的每一个特征。我在这方面很弱。不过，我觉得自己非常善于用头脑观察各种社会和经济行为。我认为这种天赋让我获益匪浅。”

我们谈到向乞丐施舍的合理性，尽管我们努力避免遇上他们。然后，他介绍了一个有关自杀的新的行为模型，他目前正与他的朋友兼博客同道——理查德·波斯纳(Richard Posner)法官一起研究该模型。波斯纳是一位经济学家，也是一位法律学者。他们试图找出自杀未遂与成功呼救之间的区别。他无意用任何“政治正确”的言辞来钝化分析的尖锐性。在谈到我的“亲爱的经济学家”专栏时——他的研究成果经常出现在这个专栏中——他没有理会我有关该专栏是半开玩笑的说法。“有些人可能会说，这个专栏的内容牵强附会。但我喜欢它对理论的应用。”

20世纪最具影响力的经济学家？

起初，贝克尔在学界遭到了强烈反对，但同时也得到了米尔顿·弗里德曼(Milton Friedman)等芝加哥学派大师们的有力支持，如今，他被视为20世纪最具影响力的经济学家之一，甚至可以说是最具影响力的经济学家。贝克尔在芝加哥大学的同事史蒂文·莱维特(Steven Levitt)，最近研究了哪些经济学家在领先刊物中激发了实证研究。

在被引用的原始数字方面，贝克尔处于绝对领先地位，与那些仅仅发表了一两个著名观点的竞争者不同，50年来，他在每个10年都曾发表若干篇具有影响力的论文。

“情况发生了很大变化。上世纪70年代至80年代，我开始注意到这点。许多毕业于哈佛(Harvard)、麻省理工学院(MIT)和斯坦福(Stanford)的年轻人，对我正在研究的东西非常感兴趣，尽管他们的导师们多数——并非全部——反对我正在做的那些课题。”

贝克尔丝毫没有流露出任何放慢脚步的迹象。除了那篇有关自杀的论文以外，他还一直在研究个体对恐怖主义恐惧的反应、人口增加的宏观经济学影响，以及进化为什么产生老是与他人攀比的人们。他在芝加哥大学授课的时间多过以往任何时候，同时，尽管他最近不再为《商业周刊》(Business Week)撰写他写了近20年的每月专栏了，但他现在仍与波斯纳一起，每周在博客上撰写一篇随笔。波斯纳曾经有可能出任美国联邦最高法院的法官（“我认为，在最高法院无人能与波斯纳相比，包括首席大法官罗伯茨(Roberts)”在内），但贝克尔如今却预测他有可能拿到诺贝尔经济学奖。

荣获诺贝尔奖后的担心

14年前，来自瑞典的一个电话，让贝克尔从流感导致的沉睡中惊醒。诺贝尔奖——此前人们就一直预测他会得奖——引发了两方面的担心。一是他的工作将不会再让人们感到不自在。“我有些为此感到烦恼。工作得到认可很好，我为此感激。但我也认为，你必须努力继续做那些有争议的、不被认可的工作。”

第二个担心是，如同多数诺贝尔奖获得者一样，贝克尔将不再从事那些严肃的工作。但这种可能性似乎很小。“我仍然喜欢我在做的工作。这是一直推动我向前的力量。我是否做得像过去一样好，这个问题可以由大家探讨。但我仍认为，我有想法，我能够作出贡献，其中有些想法很有趣，我喜欢研究它们。我希望有一个繁忙的时间表，我一直精力充沛，可以应付所有的事情，工作是我生活中最感兴趣的事情，因此我能够继续工作下去。”

贝克尔进餐速度很慢，他对谈话的兴趣大于食物。尽管我们一起坐了将近两个钟头，最后却没有点甜点和咖啡。当我们起身离开时，一个年轻的支持者走到贝克尔身边，称赞贝克尔在《商业周刊》上撰写的专栏。贝克尔和蔼地作答，然后为我把门打开，一起离开餐厅。

然后，尽管我一再谢绝，他还是与我一起在人行道上等候，直到我的出租车出现。他与我握了握手，转身走开，但看到另一个人也要上这辆出租车时，他立即转身回来帮助我上了车。一切归于平静，他脸上挂着微笑，漫步走入芝加哥午后灿烂的阳光中。

La Petite Folie餐厅，芝加哥

1份牛排配焗烤土豆

1份扇贝配超细意粉

2杯红酒

1瓶圣培露(San Pellegrino)矿泉水

总价：61.03美元

译者/何黎