【Open Letter】： A Little Economics Goes A Long Way

【提示】

本课程是中英双语授课，您可以点击“专辑--节目”选择中文或英文课程进行收听，英文课程由蒂莫西·泰勒本人讲述，对应中文内容是由专业人士完成。谢谢您的订阅，希望您能有所收获。

【音频英文稿】

"Hello, Himalaya subscribers!

My name is Timothy Taylor. Welcome to “Economics for Beginners: Presented by American economist, editor and Stanford award-winning teacher Timothy Taylor,” which is produced and distributed by Himalaya

I hope that we will be spending some time together during this course, talking about the subject of economics, the economy in China and the world economy, too.  

I will start here by telling you about my own life and background. Then I’ll explain why I’m so very pleased and excited that Himalaya has asked me to do this course for a Chinese audience.   

For the last 32 years, I have worked as Managing Editor for the Journal of Economic Perspectives. It is an academic journal – that is, the articles are written by professors of economics. Most of the economics professors are based at American universities, but we often have authors from the rest of the world, including from Europe and of course sometimes from China, too.

The readers of the journal are mostly other professors of economics, or university students taking classes in economics, or professional economists who work in government or business. My main job is to work with professors in all areas of economics in rewriting their articles, so that they explain their ideas and their results in words, not with pages of mathematical or statistical formulas.

Here is what this means for you. I know the subject of economics very well. I know the theories and facts and arguments of the professors. But more important for you as a listener, my skill  is in explaining these ideas. In particular, I have a lot of experience in explaining economics to people who know very little or nothing about the subject.

A few years ago，I had a student come up to me. She said: “I heard some people talking about the economy. It was very strange for me. Because after your course, I understood what they were talking about! It made sense!” She was so surprised, and so pleased that made me laugh.

For example, I have taught the introduction to economics class to first-year college students who have never studied any economics before. Some years ago, the students at Stanford University who had taken my introduction to economics voted me as the outstanding teacher for any subject at the university. For 20 years, I spent time at a summer program held at Stanford University for helping high school teachers learn about economics

I have written my own introductory economics textbook, which has been used at more than 100 US colleges and universities. One of my books, “The Instant Economist,” was recently translated into Chinese. I have written about economics in newspaper articles, and spoken about economics to many different groups.

This is one reason I’m so pleased and excited to be offering this course. Economics is my subject. It’s what I spend so much of my time thinking about. The modern-day global economy offers enormous opportunities, not just to earn more income, but also for health, education, technology, recreation, and travel that would have seemed like magic to people living a century ago. In this course, I have the chance to be your tour guide to the world of economics.  I get to show you around and introduce you to many of my favorite topics.Economics influences so many aspects of everyday life: a worker’s salary, why the prices of groceries are changing, the price of a house, and whether your employer might think about replacing you with a robot.    

This course will introduce and explain the basic ideas of economics, and the relationship between economics and the real-world economy How has economics changed the way people think and live by, for example, encouraging education and innovation? How do economists think about supply and demand in a market, or pollution, or technology? How do economists think differently than most other people topics like the stock market and the housing market? How do economists think about economic growth and jobs? How do they think about international trade and investment? On these topics, and many more, economics offers a different perspective that you can take into account in forming you own thoughts.

And just to be clear, the basic subject of economics is the same in China as anywhere else. Professors of economics from China come to teach at US universities, and American professors of economics come to teach at Chinese universities, too.

The basic subject of economics is the same everywhere, because economics is not a set of policies or answers that everyone has to agree with. Instead, economics is a set of terms and ideas that economists share with each other. Economists do not always agree with each other. But when economists talk, they all use this same set of terms and ideas.  This course should give you a good basic sense of the language of economics, and how economists think.

But being a tour guide to economics for a Chinese audience is especially exciting. The economy of China has been going through a dramatic transformation for about four decades now, starting back in the late 1970s. Some of the dramatic changes have been welcome, like higher incomes and improved technology, while others have been unwelcome, like a rise in air pollution. Economists offer a unique perspective by focusing on the underlying incentives that create these results—and how these incentives can be hindered or improved by government actions.

The results have been astonishing. When I was first studying economics and the global economy back in the 1970s, there were a few US economists who studied China, but not many. At that time, China was a pretty small economy, and incomes were very low. It had very little international trade or investment.

But as we will discuss, China has become the largest economy in the world. The average standard of living in China, measured by the size of China’s economy divided by its population, is more than 20 times as large as 40 years ago. When it comes to international trade and investment, China’s economy has become one of the main parts of the global economy.

China’s economic change is amazing. Economists did not expect it. There is nothing like it in world economic history.  And this rapid change seems likely to continue into the future, too.

For you listeners, living in China, these events are of course part of your life.  But sometimes, a person can be so close to something that it is hard to see the overall picture. Sometimes, a visitor from the outside, someone who has a different way of looking at things, can give you a new point of view.

As we talk about economics and China’s economy in this course, I hope that you get insights into many parts of economic life, including decisions that you make every day. I hope that when the subject of economics comes up in your daily life and your conversations and your work, it will make more sense to you, too.

Let’s get started with this course!

"I'm Timothy Taylor. Thank you for listening to Himalaya!"