下面小编将涉及到的文章标题加黑，这样方便大家查找，喜欢的同学可以将下面的文章摘录下来。
一、文章目录
[2013.07.01] Egypt: Morsi's choice 埃及总统穆尔西的抉择
[2013.07.02] Using maths to explain the universe 用数学解释整个宇宙
[2013.07.06] Transatlantic espionage: The lives of others 窃听风暴
[2013.07.06]Stem-cell therapies: Prometheus unbound干细胞治疗
[2013.07.06] LVMH and Hermès: Hidden predators 路威酩轩vs.爱马仕
[2013.07.12] New film: "Pacific Rim" 新电影：《环太平洋》
[2013.07.13] The Arab spring: Has it failed? 阿拉伯之春失败了吗?
[2013.07.13] Going for growth 亚洲谋求经济发展之道
[2013.07.13] Children’s intellectual development 儿童智力发展
[2013.07.13] The rising dollar: Green and back 美元的复苏和回归
[2013.07.13] Financial data: Seconds out 金融讯息提前外漏
[2013.07.13] Free exchange: Ad scientists 搜索引擎广告效果研究
[2013.07.13] The economy: The haves and the have-nots 富国穷国
[2013.07.20] Glad to be grey 长白头发是好事情?
[2013.07.20] The triumph of low expectations 不失望只因期望少
[2013.07.20]Bandwagon behaviour 从众行为
[2013.07.23] Britain’s recovery: Hold your breath 英伦复苏路漫漫
[2013.07.27]The Great Deceleration 金砖四国经济大减速
二、文章内容
[2013.07.13] The Arab spring: Has it failed? 阿拉伯之春失败了吗?
The Arab spring
阿拉伯之春
Has it failed?
这场革命失败了吗?
Despite the chaos, the blood and the democratic setbacks, this is a long process. Do not give up hope
民主是一场漫长的征程。纵然路上充满了混乱、流血乃至倒退，也万勿放弃希望。
Jul 13th 2013 |From the print edition
ROUGHLY two-and-a-half years after the revolutions in the Arab world, not a single country is yet plainly on course to become a stable, peaceful democracy. The countries that were more hopeful—Tunisia, Libya and Yemen—have been struggling. A chaotic experiment with democracy in Egypt, the most populous of them, has landed an elected president behind bars. Syria is awash with the blood of civil war.
阿拉伯世界爆发革命已经快两年半了。但是，迄今为止，尚未有一个国家可以明确地说已经走上了正轨，已经建立起稳定与和平的民主制度。那些希望较大的国家仍在苦苦挣扎，如突尼斯、利比亚和也门;作为阿拉伯世界中人口最多的国家，埃及的民主实验混乱不堪，民选总统已经沦为其阶下囚;叙利亚内战血流成河。
No wonder some have come to think the Arab spring is doomed. The Middle East, they argue, is not ready to change. One reason is that it does not have democratic institutions, so people power will decay into anarchy or provoke the reimposition of dictatorship. The other is that the region's one cohesive force is Islam, which—it is argued—cannot accommodate democracy. The Middle East, they conclude, would be better off if the Arab spring had never happened at all.
有人由此得出结论认为，阿拉伯之春是一场注定要失败的革命。这一点也不奇怪。在他们看来，中东之所以会有今天，是因为他们还没有为变革做好准备。他们提出了以下两个论点：一，中东地区没有民主机构，因此民众势力要么会陷入无政府状态，要么会驱使独裁政权做出重新定位;二，作为该地区一只具有凝合力的势力，伊斯兰主义无法做到同民主制度的融合。因此，要是阿拉伯之春压根就没有发生，中东的情况会比现在好很多。
That view is at best premature, at worst wrong. Democratic transitions are often violent and lengthy. The worst consequences of the Arab spring—in Libya initially, in Syria now—are dreadful. Yet as our special report argues, most Arabs do not want to turn the clock back.
这种观点，往好处说是欠考虑，往坏处说就是谬误之论。向民主转型是一个漫长的过程，其间经常充满了暴力。虽说阿拉伯之春的最坏后果——这种后果最初出现在利比亚，现在在叙利亚——非常可怕。但是，正如我们在本期的专题报道中所指出的那样，大多数阿拉伯人并不想让时光倒流。
Putting the cart before the camel
革命应当循序渐进
Those who say that the Arab spring has failed ignore the long winter before, and its impact on people's lives. In 1960 Egypt and South Korea shared similar life-expectancy and GDP per head. Today they inhabit different worlds. Although many more Egyptians now live in cities and three-quarters of the population is literate, GDP per head is only a fifth of South Korea's. Poverty and stunting from malnutrition are far too common. The Muslim Brotherhood's brief and incompetent government did nothing to reverse this, but Egypt's deeper problems were aggravated by the strongmen who preceded them. And many other Arab countries fared no better.
那些认为阿拉伯之春已经失败了的人忽视了革命之前那段漫长的冬天，以及那个冬天对民众生活所造成的影响。在1960年时，埃及与韩国尚不分上下，他们的人均预期寿命与人均GDP都基本相同。可如今，他们已经成了生活在不同世界的两个国家。尽管生活在城市中的埃及人比过去多出很多，而且其四分之三的人口已经摆脱了文盲的状态，但是这个国家的人均GDP只有韩国的五分之一。贫穷随处可见，因营养不良而影响发育的现象比比皆是。穆斯林兄弟会的短命政府缺乏能力，他们没能扭转这种状况，而埃及更深层次的问题却因为他们之前强人政治而日渐恶化。不仅埃及如此，其他阿拉伯国家也好不到哪里去。
This matters, because, given the Arab spring's uneven progress, many say the answer is authoritarian modernisation: an Augusto Pinochet, Lee Kuan Yew or Deng Xiaoping to keep order and make the economy grow. Unlike South-East Asians, the Arabs can boast no philosopher-king who has willingly nurtured democracy as his economy has flourished. Instead, the dictator's brothers and the first lady's cousins get all the best businesses. And the despots—always wary of stirring up the masses—have tended to duck the big challenges of reform, such as gradually removing the energy subsidies that in Egypt alone swallow 8% of GDP. Even now the oil-rich monarchies are trying to buy peace; but as an educated and disenfranchised youth sniffs freedom, the old way of doing things looks ever more impossible, unless, as in Syria, the ruler is prepared to shed vast amounts of blood to stay in charge. Some of the more go-ahead Arab monarchies, for example in Morocco, Jordan and Kuwait, are groping towards constitutional systems that give their subjects a bigger say.
这是一个重要的观点。因为，鉴于阿拉伯之春并不是一个同步的进程，许多人会认为，答案应该到现代化的独裁统治中去寻找。比如说，奥古斯都·皮诺切特或者李光耀就是这方面的例子。他们都是那种既能让社会秩序保持不变又能让经济实现增长的人物。但是，阿拉伯世界不同于东亚，阿拉伯世界没有资格去吹嘘自己。这是一块缺乏智慧型领导人的地区。在这里，没有领导人愿意随着经济的繁荣而自愿去培育民主制度。相反，这个地区有的是独裁者的兄弟和第一夫人的表兄，那些最好的商业都被他们所霸占。独裁者总是小心谨慎，他们不愿激起民愤，他们一直在故意逃避改革，他们一直在回避挑战。例如，在埃及，仅能源补贴一项就吞噬了该国GDP的8%。当需要取消这项补贴时，政府却始终行动迟缓。如今，即便是那些靠石油而致富的国家也在尝试着用金钱来换取和平;但是，随着受过教育的和被剥夺了公民权的年青一代尝到了自由的滋味后，过去那套老办法已经越来越行不通了，除非统治者，就像叙利亚那样，准备用无数的鲜血来换取政权的延续。当然，阿拉伯世界中也有一些思想开明的君主，如摩洛哥、约旦和科威特的国王。他们正在摸索着前进，他们准备建立一套能够让批评者获得更多发言权的宪政体系。
Fine, some will reply, but Arab democracy merely leads to rule by the Islamists, who are no more capable of reform than the strongmen, and thanks to the intolerance of political Islam, deeply undemocratic. Muhammad Morsi, the Muslim Brother evicted earlier this month by the generals at the apparent behest of many millions of Egyptians in the street, was democratically elected, yet did his best to flout the norms of democracy during his short stint as president. Many secular Arabs and their friends in the West now argue that because Islamists tend to regard their rule as God-given, they will never accept that a proper democracy must include checks, including independent courts, a free press, devolved powers and a pluralistic constitution to protect minorities.
对此，有人会这样说：很好。但是，请不要忘记，阿拉伯不会有民主制度，这场革命只会让伊斯兰主义者成为统治者。同那些强人相比，他们的改革能力也大不到那里去，而政治伊斯兰也缺乏宽容心，这是一种从骨子里透着反民主本质的政治。本月早些时候，当埃及军方将来自穆斯林兄弟会的穆罕默德·穆尔西赶下台时，他们看似是顺应了数百万街头抗议者的请求。而对于穆尔西来说，他虽然是一位民选的总统，但就是这位民选的总统在其短短的任期内，总是竭力想要摧毁那些民主的规范。如今，许多世俗的阿拉伯人和他们的西方朋友都一致认为，由于伊斯兰主义者认为他们的权力来自上天，因此他们永远也不会接受这样一种观点：一套体面的民主制度必须包括能够起到制衡作用的机构，如独立的法庭、自由的出版制度、分散的权力体系和一部能够保护少数派的多元化宪法。
This too, though, is wrong. Outside the Arab world, Islamists—in Malaysia and Indonesia, say—have shown that they can learn the habit of democracy. In Turkey too, the protests against the autocratic but elected prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have more in common with Brazil than the Arab spring. Turkey, for all its faults, is more democratic today than it was when the army lurked in the background.
然而，这种观点也是错误的。阿拉伯世界之外的伊斯兰主义者——如马来西亚和印度尼西亚的伊斯兰主义者——已经用自己的行动证明，他们能够学会民主的习惯。另一个例子是土耳其。在这个国家中，尽管民众已经起来抗议民选总理埃尔多安的专制独裁，但这场抗议活动同巴西有着更多的相同之处，而不是同阿拉伯之春有着更多的相同之处。尽管土耳其仍存在着这样和那样的不足，但是如今的这个国家早已不再是军方在幕后操纵的那个国家了，她是一个更加民主的国家。
The problem, then, is with Arab Islamists. That is hardly surprising. They have been schooled by decades of repression, which their movements survived only by being conspiratorial and organised. Their core supporters are a sizeable minority in most Arab countries. They cannot be ignored, and must instead be absorbed into the mainstream.
因此，阿拉伯的伊斯兰主义者才是问题的关键。这并不令人感到惊讶。几十年来，当局一直把他们当做是镇压的对象，他们只有依靠有组织的秘密活动才能生存下去，他们已经从中学到了很多经验和教训。在大多数阿拉伯国家中，他们的核心支持者是一个人数可观的少数派。这是一股不容忽视的力量，必须要让他们融入主流社会。
That is why Egypt's coup is so tragic. Had the Muslim Brotherhood remained in power, they might have learned the tolerance and pragmatism needed for running a country. Instead, their suspicions about democratic politics have been confirmed. Now it is up to Tunisia, the first of the Arab countries to throw off the yoke of autocracy, to show that Arab Islamists can run countries decently. It might just do that: it is on its way to getting a constitution that could serve as the basis of a decent, inclusive democracy. If the rest of the Arab world moves in that direction, it will take many years to do so.
埃及的政变之所以是一场悲剧，其原因正在于此。假如穆斯林兄弟会仍在执政，他们有可能会学会管理一个国家所必须的宽容和务实。相反，事实却证实了他们对民主政治的怀疑。如今，这种情况又即将在突尼斯上演。作为第一个摆脱独裁枷锁的阿拉伯国家，她应该能够告诉世人，阿拉伯伊斯兰主义者能够像样地管理一个国家。她可能就是这样做的：这个国家即将通过一部能够作为民主制度基础的宪法。如果其他的阿拉伯国家也朝着这个方向努力，他们可能要花费数年的时间。
That would not be surprising, for political change is a long game. Hindsight tends to smooth over the messy bits of history. The transition from communism, for instance, looks easy in retrospect. Yet three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe was overrun by criminal mafias; extremist politicians were prominent in Poland, Slovakia and the Baltics; the Balkans were about to degenerate into war and there was fighting in Georgia. Even now, most people in the old Soviet bloc live under repressive regimes—yet few want to go back.
这没有什么可大惊小怪的，因为政治变革本来就是一场漫长的博弈。在这场博弈中，后知后觉往往能让历史的混乱章节变得缓和起来。比如说，当我们现在再来回顾从共产主义到民主制度的转变时，那似乎是一场轻而易举的转变。然而，如果我们在柏林墙倒塌三年后看那场转变，当时的欧洲到处都是黑帮分子在作乱;在波兰、斯洛伐克和波罗的海诸国，极端政客大行其道;在巴尔干地区，战争一触即发;在格鲁吉亚，各方激战正酣。即使到现在为止，那些前苏联地区的大多数民众仍旧生活在集权政权之下。然而，即便如此也没有几个人想回到以前。
Don't hold back the tide
请勿逆流而动
The Arab spring was always better described as an awakening: the real revolution is not so much in the street as in the mind. The internet, social media, satellite television and the thirst for education—among Arab women as much as men—cannot co-exist with the deadening dictatorships of old. Egyptians, among others, are learning that democracy is neither just a question of elections nor the ability to bring millions of protesters onto the street. Getting there was always bound to be messy, even bloody. The journey may take decades. But it is still welcome.
在世人的眼中，阿拉伯之春更像是一场觉醒。相比之下，真正的革命并不是过多地发生在街头，真正的革命更多地是发生在人们的思想中。互联网、社交媒体、卫星电视以及对受教育的渴望不可能与僵死的老式独裁统治共生共存。民主即不仅仅是选举的问题，也不是带领数百万抗议者走上街头的能力。通向民主的道路注定曲折不平，甚至血腥暴力。这是一场可能需要数十年才能走完的征程。但即便如此，它仍然是一场受欢迎的征程。
[2013.07.13] Going for growth 亚洲谋求经济发展之道
Boom and bust in Asia
亚洲的兴衰
Going for growth
谋求经济发展
Explaining Asia’s economic success is as easy as one, two, three
亚洲经济成功的秘诀用三点就足以概括
Jul 13th 2013 |From the print edition
How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World’s Most Dynamic Region. By Joe Studwell. Grove; 366 pages; $27. Profile; £14.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
《亚洲是如何运作的——论全球最具活力地区的成与败》，Joe Studwell 著。Grove 出版社出版，全书366页，售价27美元。英国地区将由 Profile 出版社出版，售价14.99英镑。Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk 有售。
IN 1989 John Williamson, a British economist in Washington, DC, listed ten economic policies that enjoyed the backing of the IMF, the World Bank and many of their clients in Latin America. Whatever the merits of these policies, the “Washington consensus”, as he called it, proved badly named. Its prescriptions—stabilise, privatise and liberalise—have caused no end of controversy. Almost 25 years later, they get another drubbing in Joe Studwell’s provocative new book, “How Asia Works”.
1989年，英国经济学家 John Williamson 在华盛顿提出了十条经济政策，受到了国际货币基金组织、世界银行以及拉丁美洲多国的支持——这也就是他所谓的“华盛顿共识”。事实证明，无论这些政策有何种优点，都远远算不上什么“共识”。“共识”指出要采取稳定化、私有化和自由化的措施，由此引发了无数争议。大约二十五年后的今天，Joe Studwell 推出了一本措辞激进的新书《亚洲是如何运作的》。在这本书里，Williamson 的这些经济政策又一次被批驳得体无完肤。
But Mr Studwell’s own manifesto for economic success does resemble the Washington consensus in one respect: it holds that poor economies can prosper by following a short recipe of tried and tested policies. This is now an unfashionable approach among economists, who have turned their attention from policies to “institutions”: the social and political constraints that weigh on ministers, whatever policies they avow. Most authors shy away from prescriptions for success, arguing that every development dish is different.
然而，就某方面而言，Studwell 本人对经济成功的阐述确实和“华盛顿共识”有几分相似之处：他认为贫穷经济体可以对某些经过尝试和考验的政策进行些许模仿，以实现自身的繁荣。可经济学者们如今并不看好这种途径，已经把目光从政策转向了“体制”方面：因为无论政界高官支持何种政策，社会和政治方面的约束总是会让他们裹足不前。很多作家都认为每个国家或地区的发展模式都是与众不同的，不愿意写书来阐述什么经济成功之道。
Mr Studwell has no such inhibitions. Asia’s post-war miracle economies emerged, he argues, by following a recipe with just three ingredients: land reform; export-led, state-backed manufacturing; and financial repression.
Studwell 却没有这种顾虑。他认为，有些亚洲经济体在战后奇迹般地崛起了，而它们成功的秘诀归根结底无非就是三点：一是土地改革;二是由出口带动、由国家支持的制造业;三是金融抑制政策。
The process began with the ousting of the landlords. Feudal estates were broken up and divided among small farmers, who also received cheap credit and valuable advice. Smallholder farming requires “grotesque” amounts of labour, Mr Studwell concedes. But that is a good thing, because countries as poor as Taiwan or South Korea were in the 1950s have labour—and only labour—in abundance.
这些经济体的崛起是以地主退出历史舞台为起点的。封建式的私有地产被没收并分配给了小农户，同时他们还获得了低息贷款和宝贵的经验。Studwell 承认，小农型耕作需要“令人无法想象的”大量劳动力。但这不失为一件好事：因为在二十世纪五十年代，像台湾或是韩国这样贫穷的地区拥有大批劳动力——除此之外也没有别的了。
Tightly planted, closely tended farms coax the best yields out of each parcel of land. This rural bounty then creates room for the next step: export-led manufacturing. The state, Mr Studwell argues, must nurse manufacturers through their infancy, helping them to learn how to stand on their own feet. This nurture should, however, be combined with discipline: the state must oblige firms to export. Foreign sales provide an external test of their progress, allowing the state to “cull losers”, even if it cannot pick winners.
在这些地区，农场上种满了密密麻麻的作物，又受到了仔细的照料，每一块地都有很不错的产量。而后，这种农业上的富庶为亚洲繁荣的下一步创造了空间：那就是由出口带动的制造业。Studwell 认为，国家必须在制造业者尚且处于“婴幼儿期”时为它们提供充分的呵护，让它们学会如何去依靠自身力量实现发展。然而，在呵护的同时还需要进行约束：国家必须强制要求这些公司进行出口。对外销量为制造业者的发展提供了一种外在的衡量尺度，让国家得以“淘汰弱者”——即便是在无法挑选出强者的情况下。
The final secret of Asian success, Mr Studwell argues, was a cowed financial system. Captive savers, penned in by capital controls, were ripped off by the banks, which paid low interest rates. This allowed the banks to subsidise industrial firms through their years of education.
Studwell 认为，亚洲成功的最后一条秘诀就是那种受到国家钳制的金融体系。银行提供的存款利率很低，但储户被资本管制所束缚，除了接受银行的讹诈之外别无选择。这笔资金让银行得以为产业公司提供了数年的“教育经费”。
Mr Studwell’s recipe is not original: the formula dates back at least 140 years, he shows, to Japan under the Meiji emperor. Only the first step, smallholder farming, would be backed by this newspaper. But “How Asia Works” is a striking and enlightening book, which reflects the author’s unusual career. Having worked as an analyst (for the Economist Intelligence Unit, our sister company) and a consultant, he wrote books on China’s seduction of foreign businessmen and Asia’s crony capitalists. Then he went back to school, embarking on a doctorate at Cambridge, home to a number of unorthodox economists.
Studwell 的秘方并非独开先河。他表示这些成功秘诀至少可以追溯到一百四十年前明治天皇统治下的日本。而本报只对其中的第一步(也就是小农耕作)持支持态度。不过，《亚洲是如何运作的》这本书确实富于启迪性，让人耳目一新。它折射了作者不寻常的职业生涯。Studwell 曾经在本报的姊妹公司经济学人信息部担任过分析人士，也曾经从事过咨询工作。他写过几本书，论述过中国对外商的吸引力、以及亚洲的裙带资本家等等。而后他回到校园攻读博士学位，进的正是剑桥大学——这里有很多不拘传统的经济学家。
The result is a lively mix of scholarship, reporting and polemic. Its heart is a historical account of how smallholder farming, export-led manufacturing and financial repression took root in Asia’s miracle economies, such as Japan and Taiwan, but failed to bed down in the Philippines and Indonesia. This is punctuated by travelogues, describing Asia’s landscape of economic triumph and tribulation, from the kitsch houses of rice farmers in Japan’s Niigata prefecture, who have great agricultural know-how but little architectural taste, to the unfinished towers of Jakarta’s Bank Alley, their growth stunted by the Asian financial crisis.
最终，Studwell 把学术研究、调查报道以及书面论战生动地糅为一体。在一些创造奇迹的亚洲经济体中(比如日本和台湾)，小农耕作、由出口带动的制造业以及金融抑制政策是如何植根的?在菲律宾和印度尼西亚，同样的措施又为何没有形成气候?本书重点从历史角度论述了这些问题。书中还穿插了一些游记见闻，描述了亚洲大地上经济繁荣或是衰颓的景象：Studwell 写到了日本新泻县稻农的简陋住所——这些农民有高超的农业技术，却不懂什么建筑美学;也写到了雅加达岸巷里尚未建成的塔楼——由于亚洲金融危机，这些塔楼迟迟未能完工。
The most impressive part of the book is the 68 pages of footnotes in which Mr Studwell dips into his trove of reading and reporting. He includes observations on Javanese chickens, the sex life of a Korean chaebol-founder, the constitutional rules that Meiji-era Japan copied from Prussia and his exchanges with Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s former strongman.
本书让人印象最为深刻的部分就是长达68页的脚注。Studwell 读过很多书，也进行过大量报道，在脚注里他粗略提及了一些。他谈到了爪哇人饲养的鸡，谈到了韩国某个财团创始人的性生活，谈到了明治时代日本模仿普鲁士设立的宪章，还谈到了他和马来西亚前铁腕领导人马哈蒂尔•穆罕默德之间的对话。
In these notes, Mr Studwell wanders into the weeds of development (quite literally: Japanese rice is weeded nine times a year, he writes). But he never gets lost. The three-step doctrine he advocates is even shorter than the ten-step Washington consensus he opposes. But it will no doubt prove similarly controversial.
在这些脚注中，Studwell 偶尔会提到一些经济发展中无关紧要的琐事(从字面意义上来说，他写到日本的水稻一年需要进行九次除草)。但Studwell 从未偏离主题。相比他所反对的“十步走”式华盛顿共识，他本人提倡的“三步走”主义甚至更为简略。但毫无疑问，二者都将会充满争议。
[2013.07.13] Children’s intellectual development 儿童智力发展
Children’s intellectual development
儿童智力发展
Bedtime stories
睡前故事
Regular sleeping hours really are good for children—if they are girls
有规律的睡眠时间对儿童真的有好处—如果她们是女孩
Jul 13th 2013 |From the print edition
IN THAT mythical era when children were seen and not heard, and did as they were told without argument, everyone knew that regular bedtimes were important. “Dream on!” most modern parents might reply. But research by Yvonne Kelly of University College, London, shows that the ancient wisdom is right—half the time. Daughters, it seems, do benefit from regular bedtimes. Sons do not.
在那个孩子们被看见却不被倾听，没有任何异议顺从地去做被告知的事的神话般的年代，人人都知道有规律的就寝时间很重要。 大部分现代家长可能会这样回复：“怎么可能，做梦吧!”。但是伦敦大学学院的Yvonne Kelly 的研究表明，古老的智慧有一半是正确的。有规律的就寝时间对女儿似乎确实有益，对儿子却没有效果。
Dr Kelly knew of many studies that had looked at the connection between sleep habits and cognitive ability in adults and adolescents. All showed that inconsistent sleeping schedules went hand in hand with poor academic performance. Surprisingly, however, little such research had been done on children. She and a team of colleagues therefore examined the bedtimes and cognitive abilities of 11,178 children born in Britain between September 2000 and January 2002, who are enrolled in a multidisciplinary research project called the Millennium Cohort Study.
Kelly 博士熟知很多关于睡眠习惯与成年人、青少年认知能力联系的研究。所有研究都表明，反复无常睡眠安排和糟糕的学业表现是密切相关的。然而令人惊讶的是，几乎没有关于儿童这方面的研究。因此，她和她同事组成的团队调查了那些注册参加了“千禧世代研究”多学科研究项目、在2000年9月到2002年1月期间在英国出生的11,178个孩子的就寝时间和认知能力方面的信息。
The bedtime information they used was collected during four visits interviewers made to the homes of those participating in the study. These happened when the children were nine months, three years, five years and seven years of age. Besides asking whether the children had set bedtimes on weekdays and if they always, usually, sometimes or never made them, interviewers collected information about family routines, economic circumstances and other matters—including including whether children were read to before they went to sleep and whether they had a television in their bedroom. The children in question were also asked, at the ages of three, five and seven, to take standardised reading, mathematical and spatial-awareness tests, from which their IQs could be estimated.
他们用的就寝时间的信息是在四次访问期间，采访者去那些参加了这个研究的家里收集的。访问会在孩子九个月大，三岁，五岁和七岁时进行。除了问孩子们是否在工作日按时作息以及他们是总是、经常、有时按时作息，还是从未按时作息。采访者也会收集关于家庭的日常生活惯例，经济状况，还有其他事项——包括家长是否会在孩子睡觉前读东西给孩子听，孩子的卧室是否有电视。在三岁，五岁和七岁时，孩子们也会被要求去做标准化阅读、数学还有空间感测试，通过这些测试来评估他们的智商。
Dr Kelly’s report, just published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, shows that by the time children had reached the age of seven, not having had a regular bedtime did seem to affect their cognition, even when other pertinent variables such as bedtime reading, bedroom televisions and parents’ socioeconomic status were controlled for. But that was true only if they were female. On the IQ scale, whose mean value is 100 points, girls who had had regular bedtimes scored between eight and nine points more than those who did not.
Kelly 博士的报告刚在《流行病学和公共健康杂志》上发表，其报告显示在儿童到了7岁的时候，即便在睡前阅读，卧室电视还有父母社会经济地位等相关变量被控制的情况下，没有一个有规律的就寝时间似乎的确会影响他们的认知能力。但是只有在女孩身上才有这个影响。在智商测量中，女孩的平均得分是100分，有定期就寝时间的女孩的分数比那些没有定期就寝时间的女孩分数要高8到9分。
Boys were not completely unaffected. Irregular bedtimes left their IQs about six points below those of their contemporaries at the age of three. But the distinction vanished by the time they were seven.
男孩并不是完全不受影响。在他们三岁的时候，无规律的就寝时间让他们智商分数要比他们的同龄人要低大约6分。但是当他们到了7岁的时候，这个差异消失了。
This difference between the sexes is baffling. Dr Kelly did not expect it and has no explanation to offer for it. As scientists are wont to say, but this time with good reason, more research is necessary.
不同性别之间的不同是令人困惑的。Kelly博士并没有预料到这点，并且不能对此提供任何解释。就像科学家们习惯的说的，更多的研究是有必要的，但是这一次有很好的理由。
Meanwhile, in the going-to-bed wars most households with young children suffer, the sons of the house have acquired extra ammunition. Mind you, those with the nous to read and understand Dr Kelly’s results are probably not suffering from their sleep regimes anyway.
同时，在大部分有着年幼的孩子的家庭所痛苦的“去床上睡觉”的战争中，家里的儿子们已经获得了额外的弹药。注意，无论如何，如果孩子们能够理性地阅读与理解Kelly博士的研究结果，他们或许不会因其睡眠方式而受损。
[2013.07.13] The rising dollar: Green and back 美元的复苏和回归
The rising dollar
美元升值
Green and back
美元回涨
The dollar is enjoying a rare period of strength. How far can the rally go?
美元正值少有的强势发展期。这条复苏之路能走多远?
Jul 13th 2013 |From the print edition
1 VISITORS to America this summer will find their money does not stretch quite as far as on previous trips. The dollar has risen this year against a broad range of currencies, so holiday purchases will be a bit pricier than usual. A strengthening dollar is a rare thing. The upward bursts in the early 1980s and the late 1990s were deviations from a generally falling trend. Since it was freed from the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates four decades ago, the dollar has mostly fallen in value against other rich-world currencies. But a growing band of analysts reckon it is time for the greenback to regain a bit of lost ground.
这个夏天到美国旅游的游客会感受到他们的钱没有以往旅行的经用。今年以来美元对许多货币升值了，所以旅游消费与以往相比有点贵。美元升值其实真不多见;美元在80年代初期和90年代末期的短暂爆发只不过是总体下滑趋势中的偏离。自从四十年前美国挣脱了布雷顿森林体系固定汇率的锁链后，美元对其他发达国家货币几乎一直都在贬值。然而，越来越多分析家认为，美元稍作反弹的时候到了。
2 The immediate spur for optimism about the dollar is the recent signalling from the Federal Reserve that its purchases of bonds with newly created money may start to tail off as soon as September. The prospect of an end to quantitative easing has already pushed up long-term interest rates. The yield on ten-year Treasuries has risen to 2.6% from a low of 1.6% in May. As yields rise, capital is attracted to America from riskier parts of the world. That in turn pushes up the dollar.
最近人们看涨美元的直接原因就是美联储表态，它增发货币来购买债券这一举措或许最快从九月份开始有所放缓。未来量化宽松政策退出的前景也已经拉高了长期利率。十年期的国债收益已从五月份1.6%的低位上升到了2.6%。既然收益上涨，资金就会从其他风险更高的地区流向美国，这也进一步推高了美元币值。
3 The deeper cause of the dollar rally is the relative health of America’s economy. Bad mortgage debts have been cleaned out of banks. The housing market is recovering. Jobs are growing steadily. Non-farm employers added 195,000 workers to their payrolls in June, in line with the average increase so far this year.
美元恢复势头更深层次的原因是相对健康的美国经济。银行清除了不良抵押借债;住房市场逐步复苏;就业率平稳上升;六月份非农就业人数增加了19.5万人，保持今年以来的上升势头。
4 GDP growth has been modest even if it is likely to strengthen a bit. In an update to its projections, the IMF this week forecast that the American economy will grow by 2.7% next year. That is hardly a boom. But other big rich economies, such as Japan and Britain, cannot hope to do nearly as well. And the euro zone is still in recession.
尽管经济有走高的迹象，但发展依然平稳适度。这周，国际货币基金组织在对美国GDP进行最新预测，称明年美国经济将会增长2.7%。这样的增长虽然说不上繁荣，但比起像日本和英国等发达大国，美国显然更胜一筹;经济低迷的欧盟更是望其项背。
5 As if to underline these divergent fortunes central banks in Europe indicated earlier this month that looser monetary policy may still be required on their patch. Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), said on July 4th that the bank expects to keep its main interest rates “at present or lower levels for an extended period of time”. This was the first time the ECB had given explicit guidance about the future path of interest rates. It came shortly after a statement from the Bank of England’s monetary-policy committee, meeting for the first time under its new governor, Mark Carney, which said the British economy was still too weak to warrant the increases in the bank’s benchmark interest rate implied by recent rises in longer-term bond yields.
欧洲各国央行月初声明要在国内继续放宽货币政策，似乎在强调这两种不同的命运。欧洲央行主席Mario Draghi在7月4日称，欧洲央行“在未来一段时间内不会上调”主要利率。这是欧洲央行首次对未来利率走势作出明确表态。此前不久，英格兰银行的货币政策委员会的新任主席Mark Carney首次在主持的会议上发表声明;他指出，最近长期国债收益率上升暗示英格兰银行可能会加息，但其实英国经济仍较为疲软，无法承受。
6 The Fed’s own forward guidance about the probable “tapering” of its bond purchases is what pushed up these yields in Europe. As the extent to which monetary policy in America and Europe are on different paths becomes clear, the transatlantic gap in market interest rates is likely to widen. The dollar ought to rise further.
美联储减购债券剑拔弩张，欧洲的长期债券收益上涨也归咎于这一指导方针。随着欧美逐渐明晰了各自不同的货币政策，大西洋两岸的市场利率之间的隔阂很可能会不断扩大。美元也会进一步升值。
Still shallow
升值幅度依然不大
7 But how much further? For now a fitful upwards grind of 5-7% against the other major currencies might well be the limit. America’s economy is doing well enough to give its currency a boost, but it is not yet so strong as to spur the sort of bull run the dollar enjoyed in the late 1990s. Even if the Fed dials back bond purchases soon, it might be years before it raises its benchmark interest rate from near zero. The Fed has said it will stay where it is until unemployment, now 7.6%, has fallen to 6.5%; on July 10th Ben Bernanke, its chairman, said the rate could stick at near zero long after that. And the Fed would itself react to a fast-rising dollar: no rich country is keen to have a strong currency when growth is scarce. That is why the dollar rally will be a shallow one, says Kit Juckes, an analyst at Société Générale.
但美元升值幅度究竟会有多大?从现在美元对其他主要货币升值乏力的情况来看，升值5%到7%可能就是极限了。美国的经济繁荣拉动了美元升值的链条，但却还没有强势到将90年代末的牛市再次历史重演。即使美联储随即停购债券，但要想上调它接近于零的基准利率，那可能要花上好几年的时间。美联储指出，除非失业率从现在的7.6%降到6.5%，否则它不会对货币政策做任何转变。7月10日，美联储主席Ben Bernanke进一步表态，失业率降至6.5%时，基准利率可以长期维持在零上下。同时，美联储本身对美元升值过快也会适当调节，因为发达国家在经济疲软的时候都不希望国家货币发展得强劲。对此法兴银行的分析师Kit Juckes指出，这就说明了未来美元升值幅度不大。
8There may also be a limit to how far the euro can fall. The euro zone’s sovereign-debt crisis has dragged on for more than three years. Yet in all that time the euro could rarely be described as cheap. And even after the monetary-policy steers from the Fed and the ECB, the euro is still a bit above the fair value of $1.26 suggested by the Big Mac index, our rough-and-ready guide to currencies.
与此同时，欧元贬值也有个限度。主权债务危机的噩梦已经缠绕着欧盟三年多了，但总的来看欧元还说不上便宜。即使是在美联储和欧洲央行采取货币政策进行调控之后，按照《经济学人》的简易汇率评判标准——巨无霸指数来判断，欧元对美元的合理汇率是1:1.26，目前的欧元汇率仍略高于这一水平。
9 One reason for this resilience might be that euros are harder for foreigners to earn than dollars are: the euro zone has a large current-account surplus whereas America has a big deficit. Another is that China’s central bank may have used any temporary weakness in the euro as an opportunity to diversify its huge reserves away from the dollar. Can the euro get below, say, $1.20? “You’ll have to ask the Chinese,” says a US-based hedge-fund manager.
欧元之所以有如此韧劲的一个原因也许是外国人赚欧元比赚美元要难：欧盟的经常账户有大笔盈余，而美国只有一片赤字。另一个原因是中国央行每次在欧洲磕磕碰碰的时候，都会趁机排挤美元，吸纳欧元，以使外汇储备多样化。有人问欧美汇率有可能跌到1:1.20吗?一位美国对冲基金的经理回答，“那你得问问中国人了。”
10 The dollar seems likely to make the biggest gains against emerging-market currencies. A handful of countries, including India and South Africa, which depend on foreign capital to finance their trade deficits have already seen their currencies fall by around 10% since the beginning of May, merely on the prospect that the Fed might take its foot off the monetary-policy pedal (see chart). As long as bond yields were low in America, rich-world investors were happy to buy emerging-market bonds. But such capital will be a lot harder to secure from America as quantitative easing comes to an end.
美元升值如入无人之境，把新兴市场国家的货币撇在身后。包括印度和南非在内的多个国家都是通过外汇调节国内的贸易逆差，自五月初以来，这些国家的货币贬值幅度已达10%左右，这就是美联储即将放宽货币政策的结果(见图表)。美国债券收益一天不高，发达国家的投资者就只会把购买热情洒在新兴市场国家的债券上。但随着美国量化宽松政策落下帷幕，这些想要规避美国的外国投资将会难上加难。
11 Some emerging markets have already reportedly sold a slug of dollars from their foreign-exchange reserves to slow the descent of their currencies. There may be some second-round effects from this as these central banks then replenish their dollar reserves by selling some of their euros. By next summer visitors to America may find the dollar that bit stronger and their wallets emptying that bit faster.
据报道，一些新兴市场国家已经从外汇储备中抛售了小部分美元，为的是减缓货币贬值。当这些央行又想通过出售部分欧元(资产)回补美元储备时，另一波浪潮或许又会在这个基础上衍生开来。也许明年夏天这些游客再度来到美国时，他们会发现美元又升值了点，钱包空得又快了点。
[2013.07.13] Financial data: Seconds out 金融讯息提前外漏
Financial data
金融讯息
Seconds out
当!时间到!
Is it a crime to give people an early peek at data?
将金融讯息提早透露给他人是否违法?
Jul 13th 2013 | NEW YORK |From the print edition
1 MORE than a half century ago the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research created a well-received monthly index tracking American consumer sentiment. Until 2007 it was funded by more than 100 “supporters” who got an advanced look at the results. No one got overly upset by this. Such sangfroid is emblematic of a different era.
早在大半个世纪以前，美国密歇根大学社会研究所就曾按月发布“美国消费者信心指数”的跟踪报告，人们反响不错。直到2007年，共有100多位“支持者”出钱支持这份报告进行下去，回报即是提前得知报告结论。没有人因此太过担忧，人们镇定的表象的原因实则是另一时代的特有标志。
2 In 2007 Thomson Reuters agreed to pay in excess of $1m for distribution rights to the University of Michigan index. In 2008 the information provider began sending the results out in three bursts—one a general distribution via press release; another five minutes earlier through all its terminals (which means it was reported by Reuters as well as other subscribers); and another a mere two seconds earlier but plenty long enough to be of use to a small coterie of fee-paying high-speed traders.
2007年，汤森路透同意花100多万美元，用来拿到密歇根大学指数报告的发布权。2008年，密歇根大学发布报告结果的方式可以称得上是“广、频、快”：一是通过新闻发布作为一般经销渠道;二是提前5分钟发送给其所有的终端接受者(也就是包括汤森路透在内的其他订购者);第三种，仅仅提前2秒发布：别小看这两秒钟，这对一小部分付了钱的快速投资者来说已经不算短了。。
3 Thomson Reuters suspended this third feed on July 8th in response to demands by Eric Schneiderman, New York’s attorney-general, who is conducting an investigation into the distribution of sensitive financial information. “The securities markets should be a level playing-field for all investors and the early release of market-moving survey data undermines fair play,” he said.
纽约总检察长埃里克施奈德曼一直在调查敏感性金融讯息的发布情况。7月8日，应他的要求，汤森路透撤去了第三种“小灶”灶台。埃里克说：“证券市场应当为所有投资者提供一个公平公正的“游戏”场所，提早泄露市场动态的调查讯息明显破坏了游戏的公正性。”
4 Mr Schneiderman’s definition of “fair play” remains unclear. Why draw the line at the feed for high-frequency traders but not the one to paying subscribers, for example? Thomson Reuters says it uses the same multi-tiered distribution strategy in only one other area, the European release of a purchasing managers’ survey in conjunction with Markit, a financial-information firm. But staggered releases are common enough. The Chicago Business Barometer, another purchasing managers’ index, is distributed by Deutsche Börse, an exchange operator, to paying subscribers three minutes earlier than to the wider world, for example.
埃里克对于“游戏公正性”的定义尚不明确。这样说吧，为什么对提前发布给高频交易者设限却对提前发布给订购者却未加干涉?另一个且是唯一的运用了相同多层分销战略的地区位于欧洲，即森路透与金融信息公司麦盖提针对采购经理人调查发布报告协同合作。但是，错时发布是很常见的做法。比如，德意志交易所散发的另一个采购经理人指数——芝加哥商业景气指数，就为付费订购者提供先于外部3分钟的讯息。
5 The involvement of the University of Michigan raises another set of issues: you could argue that information provided by public entities like a state university should be distributed broadly to the public. The university itself contends that the consumer-sentiment survey is just one of many forms of sponsored research that would never be done at all were there not outsiders willing to subsidise it, and that its wide distribution does provide a public benefit.
由于事件涉及密歇根大学，这也引发了另外一组问题：人们认为诸如像公立大学这样的公共实体提供的讯息应该更广泛的告知给公众。密歇根大学解释说消费者信心调查只不过是众多接受赞助研究的一项;并且谈到假如没有外部参与订购，这些研究根本完成不了。密歇根大学又声称自己广泛播撒式的发布讯息也的的确确照顾到了公众利益。
[2013.07.13] Free exchange: Ad scientists 搜索引擎广告效果研究
Free exchange
自由交流
Ad scientists
搜索引擎广告效果研究
Simple tests can overstate the impact of search-engine advertising
简单的测试可能会高估搜索引擎广告的作用
Jul 13th 2013 |From the print edition
1 SEARCH for a term like “tennis balls” using Google, Bing or Yahoo, and two types of link appear. The majority form a long list of “organic” results. Companies pay the search engines nothing for these. But those at the very top and on the right-hand side of the screen are paid links, a form of advertising that accounts for most of the revenue of search engines. These search ads appear to solve a puzzle that has preoccupied advertisers since John Wanamaker, the 19th-century founding father of marketing, reportedly declared: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” But new research shows that the simple measures often used to assess the impact of search ads may be exaggerating their effectiveness.
在谷歌、必应或是雅虎上搜索某个词语(如 “tennis balls”)时，搜索引擎会显示两种类型的网页链接。主体部分是一个长长的“自然”搜索结果列表，广告客户无需为此付费。而另外一些出现在页面顶部或右侧的链接则需要付费——这是一种广告形式，是搜索引擎的主要收入来源。 据传十九世纪“营销之父”约翰•沃纳梅克曾说过：“我花在广告上的钱有一半是被浪费掉的，麻烦的是我不知道是哪一半。”搜索引擎广告似乎解决了这个自沃纳梅克以来一直困扰着广告主的问题。但是新的研究表明，评估搜索广告作用常用的简单方法可能夸大了这种广告的效果。
2 Establishing cause and effect in offline advertising is hard. Ads are difficult to target: space on billboards and in newspapers is seen by lots of shoppers. Some of these eyeballs are worth spending money on; others, either because they belong to existing customers or to people who never will be, are not. And even when big ad campaigns are followed by strong sales, the intuitive conclusion—that rising sales are the result of good ads—can be misleading. Advertising budgets often rise in good times so that spending and sales grow together, even if the advertisements are useless. The ads and the sales have a common cause—strong demand—but may have no causal link.
对线下广告的影响效果进行分析可不容易。广告很难锁定目标：许多购物者都会看到公告牌或者报纸上的广告。其中的部分读者确实值得花钱投广告，另外一部分则不然——因为他们可能已经是现有的顾客，或者永远也不会来光顾。就算在一轮大的广告攻势之后出现了销售高潮，让人觉得是广告带动了销售增长，但这仍然可能是一种错觉。旺季时广告预算通常会增加，即使广告没起到任何作用，销售额仍会和广告支出同步增长。强劲的需求是广告增加和销量增长的共同推手，但广告和销量之间不一定有因果关系。
3 Internet advertising seems to offer a solution to both these problems. First, internet search ads are targeted: the links that search engines show are based on a combination of the search term a user has typed in and his browsing history. Second, because firms can track whether visitors to their websites come from search-engine links they have paid for, they can work out whether ads convert into sales.
互联网广告似乎为这些问题提供了解决方案。首先互联网搜索广告能够锁定目标：搜索引擎是在用户搜索某个关键字时，结合他的浏览历史来决定应该显示什么广告的。另外广告客户能分析出其网站的访客是不是从搜索引擎上的付费广告链接跳转而来，从而能够知道广告是否带来了销售。
4 Not so fast. Spurious correlations are also rife in the online world, as a 2011 paper* by Randall Lewis, Justin Rao and David Reiley, a trio of economists then working for Yahoo, shows. Individuals use the web in a lumpy way. On some days lots of sites are visited and many purchases made; on others usage is lighter. This makes comparisons across time unhelpful. On a high-activity day people will tend to perform a lot of searches (and see lots of ads) as well as make many purchases. The relationship between the ads and the purchases looks causal, but may not be.
但是且慢，虚假关联在网络世界中也普遍存在。2011年时为雅虎工作的三位经济学家，兰达尔•刘易斯、贾斯廷•劳以及戴维•赖利在一篇论文*中阐述了这个问题。人们的网上活动规律性不强。有时一天会访问许多网站、买很多东西，有时就不怎么上网。所以不同时间的对比无效。活跃的时候人们一天里会进行大量搜索(看很多广告)并买许多东西。广告和购买行为之间看起来似乎有因果关系，但实情也许并非如此。
5 To test this problem of “activity bias”, the authors recruited volunteers online and split them into two groups. The first group watched a video promoting Yahoo, and the other group watched a political broadcast. The first group used Yahoo around three times more after seeing the ad, giving the impression it was very influential. But the control group—those subjected to a bout of politics but no Yahoo promotion—also used Yahoo a lot more. Both groups happened to be in an active period of internet use. This is why they were recruited in the first place and why they used Yahoo more than in previous periods. Lumpy internet use created a false sense of advertising impact.
为了检验“活跃性偏差”，上述论文作者在网上招募了志愿者，并把他们分成两组。第一组志愿者观看雅虎的宣传视频，第二组则观看一个政治宣传片。第一组志愿者看完广告之后使用雅虎的次数与之前相比增加了三次，给人以“广告很有效果”的印象。然而看了一通政治宣传片的对照组志愿者使用雅虎的次数同样增加了。这两组志愿者刚好都处在使用互联网的活跃期。这是他们之前被招募成为志愿者原因，也是他们与事前相比会更频繁地使用雅虎的原因。互联网使用情况的变化会让人错误地评估广告的影响。
6 The problem of activity bias means that in order to assess the effect of search ads, a proper control group is needed. A 2013 study by Chris Nosko of Chicago University and Steven Tadelis of the University of California, Berkeley, shows how such a test can be designed. Together with Thomas Blake of eBay they examined how important it was for the auction site to buy ads that appear when the term “eBay” is used in a search (“eBay tennis socks”, for example). In March 2012 they switched off eBay’s brand advertisements on Yahoo and Bing, but kept paying for them on Google as a control.
活跃性偏差现象的存在意味着要正确评估搜索广告的效果，需要有一个合适的对照组。2013年芝加哥大学的克里斯•诺斯科和加利福尼亚大学伯克利分校的史蒂夫•塔德利斯完成的一项研究介绍了一种对此类问题进行分析的方法。购买带有“eBay”关键字的搜索广告(如当用户搜索“eBay tennis socks”时显示广告)对eBay这样的拍卖网站来说有多大的必要?上述研究人员和eBay的汤姆斯•布雷克一起进行了研究。2012年3月他们停止了eBay在雅虎和必应上的品牌广告，但保留谷歌上的广告以作为参照。
7 The finding was striking. When the sponsored ad was turned off, search-engine users simply switched to the first “organic” link that mentioned eBay. Overall, the site retained 99.5% of its traffic. Users who type in a brand-specific search are already trying to navigate to eBay’s site. Even if they appear lower down, free search results work just as well as ones that are paid for.
研究的发现相当惊人。广告停止期间，搜索引擎用户会转而直接点击第一个提到eBay的“自然”搜索结果链接。总的来说，eBay保住了99.5%的流量。用户在输入含有“eBay”的搜索关键字的时候，其实已经打定主意要浏览eBay了。即使相关的链接显示在页面的底端，免费的搜索结果也能发挥出与付费广告链接同样的效果。
Calling Mr Draper
呼叫德雷柏先生①
8 Firms like eBay don’t just pay for adverts when their brand is mentioned, of course. They place ads in response to millions of other words that indicate the presence of a potential customer. So a second test also investigated ads associated with non-branded keywords (“tennis socks”, for instance). The researchers tracked spending on ads and the number of “attributed sales” (sales made within 24 hours of clicking on a paid Google link) over time. A simple correlation analysis showed a familiar result: ads and sales tend to rise and fall together. A 10% increase in spending seems to raise revenues by 9%. The ads appear to work.
当然像eBay这样的公司不会只购买包含品牌名称的搜索广告。他们还会针对上百万的其它搜索词汇做广告，只要有找到潜在的客户的可能。所以研究者进行了第二项测试，深入研究不包含品牌名称关键字的搜索广告(如针对“tennis socks”的搜索广告)。研究者跟踪和分析了广告支出和“广告所带来的销售量”(点击付费谷歌广告链接24小时之内实现的销量)之间的关系。一项简单的相关性分析得出了大家都熟悉的结果：广告数量和销售量同步上升或下降。增加10%的广告费似乎能让销售收入增加9%。广告看起来是起作用的。
9 To check these results the authors split America into 210 geographical segments. A third were picked at random, with all Google advertising switched off. Of the rest, the researchers selected regions where patterns of internet activity closely resembled those where the ads were turned off. This allowed them to isolate sales variations that were caused by ads, rather than lumpy activity. The isolated impact is far smaller: a 10% increase in ad spending raises revenues by just 0.5%. (Results for users who had never previously used eBay were stronger, however, suggesting that firms with lesser-known brands may gain more from ads.)
为了检验分析结果，研究者把美国划分成了210个地理区域。他们随机选择其中三分之一的区域停掉了谷歌广告，并从剩下的区域中选择出互联网活跃性接近的作为参照组。通过这种方式，研究者能够把广告的影响和互联网访问活跃程度变化的影响区分开来。使用这种分离变量的方法计算出来的广告影响比原来估算的要小得多：广告支出增加10%只能使销售收入提升0.5%(但对于从来没有用过eBay的用户来说，广告的影响较强，说明知名度较低的品牌能够利用广告获益更多)。
10 Bosses should still take Wanamaker’s fear seriously: a rise in sales after an ad campaign does not automatically mean that the ads worked. But it also shows how the online world is getting closer to solving the conundrum he posed. Far from being an industry where cause and effect remain murky, online advertising may yet become one area where the dismal science can predict how to get costs down and profits up.
所以老板们还得认真考虑“沃纳梅克之忧”：广告攻势之后的销售增长并不一定是广告在发挥作用。当然相关研究也表明，在网上这个问题正逐步得到解决。在线广告将不会再是一个投入和产出关系不明的行业，在这里枯燥乏味的科学将能够为您指出降低成本、提高利润的方法。
Sources
"Industry and Trade: A Study of Industrial Technique and Business Organization; and of Their Influences on the Conditions of Various Classes and Nations", A. Marshall, MacMillan and Co, 1919
“Here, there, and everywhere: correlated online behaviors can lead to overestimates of the effects of advertising”, by R.A. Lewis, J.M. Rao and D.H. Reiley, Proceedings of the 20th international conference on World wide web, 2011
“Consumer Heterogeneity and Paid Search Effectiveness: A Large Scale Field Experiment”, by Thomas Blake, Chris Nosko and Steven Tadelis, NBER, 2013
[2013.07.13] The economy: The haves and the have-nots 富国穷国
The economy
The haves and the have-nots
But even rich Arab countries cannot squander their resources indefinitely
Jul 13th 2013 |From the print edition
1 THE SWEET PERFUME wafting over northern Iraq does not come from the wildflowers that speckle its rumpled plains in spring. It is the smell of oil and it is everywhere, flaring at wellheads, sloshing from the tanker trucks that grind up potholed roads to backyard refineries in the Kurdish hills and fuming from their chimneys. Nor is this the oiliest part of Iraq. That lies in the deserts to the south where it literally seeps from the ground. In fact the whole of Iraq sits atop seams and pockets of the sticky stuff. There is plenty to go around, if only the Iraqis could agree to stop shooting each other.
2 There is plenty for other Arabs, too. Taken together, their 19 countries hold some 46% of the world’s total proven oil reserves (as well as a quarter of its natural-gas reserves). The ones with the most have it doubly easy. Saudis or Kuwaitis spend just $3 to tap a barrel from their most accessible wells. Small wonder that their oilmen scoff at looming competition from America’s fancy fr
