双语新闻：就业匹配模型
Supply and demand is a fundamental economic concept, andunemployment is a totemic economic problem. But apply theconcept to the problem, and you will not get very far. The logicof supply and demand says that if wages are high, lots of peoplewill want to work, but few people will want to employ them; ifwages are low, employers will be hungry to go hiring, but fewpeople will want to work. At equilibrium, the number of hoursavailable equals the number of hours people are willing to work. Unemployment is impossible, unlessthere is a minimum wage - this suggests, for instance, that unemployment was unknown in the UKbefore April 1 1999, which is not my recollection. The supply-and-demand approach offers littleinsight into job-market recessions, or why different countries have such different experiences ofemployment.供求是一个基本的经济概念，失业是一个标志性的经济问题。但如果把这一概念应用到这个问题中，你会发现这一理论不会带来很大帮助。按照供求理论，如果薪资高，很多人会愿意工作，但几乎无人愿意聘用他们；如果薪资低，雇主会愿意聘用人手，但几乎无人愿意工作。在均衡水平上，现有的工作小时数与人们愿意工作的时间相同。失业是不可能的，除非有最低工资——按照这个逻辑，1999年4月1日之前，失业在英国是一个陌生的概念，而这与我的回忆不符。供求理论几乎没有给就业市场衰退提供任何洞见，也不能解释为何不同国家有着如此不同的就业状况。
In this year's Royal Economic Society public lecture, Christopher Pissarides, winner of the Nobelmemorial prize in economics in 2010, set out to resolve the mystery. Pissarides, along with PeterDiamond and Dale Mortensen, has developed a model of job-matching that has become thestandard way macroeconomists think about labour markets.
在今年皇家经济学会(Royal Economic Society)的公开演讲中，2010年诺贝尔(Nobel)经济学奖得主克里斯托弗 皮萨里季斯(Christopher Pissarides)打算解决这一谜题。皮萨里季斯与彼得 戴蒙德(Peter Diamond)和戴尔 莫滕森(Dale Mortensen)提出了一个就业匹配模型，这已成为宏观经济学家思考劳动力市场的标准方法。
The basic insight is nothing staggering. There are job-seekers in the world, and there are jobvacancies in the world, and the aim is to match seekers to vacancies to create actual “jobs”, whichare matched pairs of former vacancies and former job-seekers. Searching for suitable vacancies, orsuitable employees, is costly, and neither job-seeker nor employer knows whether any match willwork out.
其中的基本理念没有什么令人吃惊的内容。世界上存在求职者，也存在职位空缺，目的是让求职者与职位空缺匹配，创造真正的“工作”，即之前的职位空缺与之前的求职者达成匹配的结果。搜寻合适的职位空缺或者合适的雇主代价高昂，求职者和雇主都不知道这些匹配能否持续。
In such “search models”, unemployment isn't a puzzle; it's the natural state of economic existence, just as being single is the natural state of romantic existence. All of us are born unemployed andsingle, and if we want that to change, sooner or later we will have to start looking for a suitablematch.
在这种“搜寻模型”中，失业不再令人困惑；它是一种经济存在的自然状态，就像单身是一种浪漫存在的自然状态一样。我们每个人一出生都没有工作，而且单身，如果我们希望改变这点，我们迟早都必须开始搜寻合适的匹配
Once Pissarides, Diamond and Mortensen began to write models that encapsulated some of thesecommon-sense observations, they discovered a natural explanation for the “Beveridge curve”.
在皮萨里季斯、戴蒙德和莫滕森开始编写将此类常识性看法浓缩在一起的模型时，他们发现了“贝弗里奇曲线”(Beveridge Curve)的一种自然解释
The Beveridge curve is a simple downward-sloping relationship between the vacancy rate in aneconomy, and the unemployment rate. In good times, vacancies are plentiful and unemploymentis low; in a recession, the economy slides down the Beveridge curve to a place where vacanciesare scarce and unemployment is high. More interesting is the fact that the curve itself sits indifferent positions for different economies, and it can shift. The Beveridge curve in much of the EUis higher than that in the US, for instance - for any given level of vacancies, there will be lessunemployment in the US.
贝弗里奇曲线描述的是，一国经济中职位空缺数量与失业率之间简单的向下倾斜的关系。在景气时期，职位空缺数量很多，失业率较低；在经济衰退中，该国经济会沿着贝弗里奇曲线下滑，到达职位空缺数量稀少、而失业率较高的位置。更有意思的是，在不同的经济体中，这条曲线本身所处的位置不同，而且它可以移动。例如，欧盟(EU)很多国家的贝弗里奇曲线高于美国，换句话说，在任何既定的职位空缺数量上，美国的失业率较低。
This fits a search-and-matching explanation. If the curve shifts outwards, with both vacancies andunemployment rising simultaneously, that is a sign of some kind of structural failure to match: there are potential jobs but for some reason, the match between vacancy and job-seeker is notoccurring as quickly as usual. The US is showing signs of this structural stress: vacancies are on therise but unemployment is falling more slowly than we would expect based on past experience.
这符合搜寻与匹配的解释。如果这条曲线向外侧移动，职位空缺数量和失业率同时上升，那就表明存在某种结构性匹配失灵：存在潜在的就业岗位，但出于某种原因，职位空缺和求职者之间的匹配没有像往常那么快地发生。美国正显示出这种结构性压力的迹象：职位空缺数量增加，但失业率下降速度慢于我们根据过往经历所作的预测。
Meanwhile, Germany, whose labour market has been defying the financial crisis, has enjoyedstructural gains: unemployment has been falling even when vacancies have not been buoyant. Pissarides credits the delayed effects of Gerhard Schroeder's labour market reforms, with moreflexibility and plenty of incentives to match young people with jobs.
与此同时，近年德国享受着结构性好处：失业率不断下降，即便在职位空缺并不多的情况下也是如此。德国劳动力市场经受住了金融危机的考验。皮萨里季斯将此归功于格哈德 施罗德(GerhardSchr der)推行的劳动力市场改革的延迟影响，即更多的灵活性和大量激励举措，推动年轻人与就业岗位匹配。
The question, of course, is what feature of Germany's labour market has proved decisive in this - and what we can transplant into other countries. Even a Nobel laureate was not able to give aconvincing answer to that question.
当然，问题在于，德国劳动力市场的哪种特征在这方面发挥了决定性作用？而我们能把什么经验推广到其他国家？对于这个问题，就连一个诺贝尔奖得主也无法给出令人信服的答案。
(编辑：何莹莹）
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