A recent online exchange between Steve Roth and my colleague Matthew Klein contains much food for thought. It started with a post by Roth titled “Why economists don’t know how to think about wealth”, which alleged, in simplified terms, that mainstream economists miss much of what goes on in the economy by focusing largely on flows of income, spending and saving rather than the stocks of wealth, assets and liabilities. Klein’s retort warned against “dangers in making capital gains and losses more central than they already are”. And Roth has replied to some of Klein’s comments.
史蒂夫•罗斯(Steve Roth)和我的同事马修•克莱恩(Matthew Klein)最近在网上展开了一场十分引人深思的论战。这场论战始于罗斯的一篇题为《为什么manbetx20客户端下载 学家不懂如何看待财富》的文章，简言之，这篇文章称，主流manbetx20客户端下载 学家们由于侧重于关注收入流动、支出和储蓄，而不是财富存量、资产及债务，因而错过了很大一部分manbetx20客户端下载 活动。克莱恩在反驳中警告，要提防“把资本损益放在比它们现有的地位更为核心的位置的危险”。罗斯对克莱恩的一些评论做了回应。