评论
打印
美国华人买鱼为何便宜？
经济学家往往抽象地研究"市场"，但一些市场绝不是抽象的。在荷兰，阿斯米尔(Aalsmeer)鲜花市场每天会有2000万朵色彩艳丽的鲜花上市；而东京清晨的筑地鱼市(Tsukiji fish market)，其迷人程度足以与六本木(Roppongi)的夜店争夺游客的注意力。（筑地鱼市场游客区熏鼻的酒味说明，许多游客将这两种体验结合在一起，在这里通宵狂欢。）
Economists tend to study "the market" in the abstract, but some markets are anything but abstract. The Aalsmeer auctions in the Netherlands burst with the colour of more than 20 million flowers a day, while Tokyo's early-morning Tsukiji fish market (lovingly described on page 16) is enthralling enough to compete for tourist attention with the nightclubs of Roppongi. (The stink of alcohol in the tourist pens of Tsukiji suggests that many visitors have combined both experiences to make a night of it.)
除了游客之外，这些著名的市场也值得经济学家关注。很多经济学理论都有假设前提，不考虑市场交易实际如何进行。这是一件令人惋惜的事；斯坦福大学(Stanford)已故经济学家约翰o麦克米兰(John McMillan)认为，市场只有在设计完备的情况下才能运转良好。市场的全部理念在于使人们能够从交易中获利；设计糟糕的市场通常会失败。
These celebrated markets deserve attention from economists as well as tourists. A lot of economics assumes away the details of how market transactions actually work. That is a shame; the late John McMillan, an economist at Stanford, argued that markets will only work well if they are well designed. The whole idea of a market is to allow gains from trade to take place; a badly thought-out market will often fail.
即使对于像买鱼这样简单的交易，事情也并不像乍看上去那样简单。
There is more than meets the eye even to a simple transaction such as buying fish.
