世界报业辛迪加网站7月1日刊登法国经济学家、公共政策专家、德国赫尔梯行政学院教授让·皮萨尼-费里文章《再见，平坦的世界》

文：Jean Pisani-Ferry

译：由冠群

五十年前人们有种传统观念，认为富国支配穷国，而且富国会越来越富，穷国会越来越穷，至少相对而言是这样。而那时的经济学家，如瑞典的冈纳·缪尔达尔（新制度学派经济学家），美国的安德烈·冈德·弗兰克（世界体系论奠基人之一）和法国的弗朗索瓦·佩鲁（提出“发展极”理论的经济学家）等，都曾对国与国之间日益不平等、欠发达问题日益突出、以及富国对穷国经济统治等现象提出过警告。当时的人对贸易和外商投资普遍报以怀疑的态度。

后来的历史证明，这种传统观念是错误的。过去五十年来最重要的经济发展现象就是，相当多贫穷国家开始在收入水平上追赶富国。日内瓦高级国际关系学院教授理查德·鲍德温在其极具启发意义的作品《大融合》一书中解释说，这种追赶式经济增长的主要动力来自国际贸易和思想观念传播成本的显著下降——他将其称为（技术和生产的）“第二次拆分”。《纽约时报》专栏作者托马斯·弗里德曼对该历史阶段的本质有着精妙的总结。他在2005年的著作《世界是平的》里宣称，供所有人竞逐的运动场正在变平。

除了知识、贸易和投资的流动，这种比较具有平等主义色彩的国际经济关系图景也适用于其他方面。二十年前，大多数学者都认为浮动汇率制将使国与国间更加平等：无论大国还是小国，只要国内政策机制健全，所有国家都可以自行制定本国货币政策。固定汇率制所特有的不对称性已经不复存在。有一段时期，人们甚至认为资本流动也能起到潜在的均衡作用。1997年时，国际货币基金组织把资本流动自由化作为所有国家的目标。

在这样一个平坦的世界上，美国也只不过一个国家，尽管它更先进、更庞大。当然，这种说法有些夸张，不过美国领导人自己往往也倾向于淡化处理美国的中心性以及与之对应的巨大责任。

可后来情况又发生了变化：从无形投资到数字网络，再到金融和汇率，人们越来越清楚地认识到全球经济的大变革已经重新确立了中心性。新经济所塑造的世界不再平坦，而是尖刺状的。

一个原因是，在数字化程度越来越深的经济中，越来越多新增服务的边际成本为零，价值创造和价值占有（value appropriation）都向创新中心汇聚，这里也是无形投资最密集的地方。而有形商品的生产者则越来越得不到投资。

数字网络同样会造成不对称性。就在几年前，许多人还认为互联网将成为一个去中心化的、点对点的全球网络。可事实上，互联网已经演化出一个层级分明的轮辐状体系，这主要是出于技术原因：轮辐结构更高效。但是正如政治学者亨利·法雷尔和亚伯拉罕·纽曼在近期论文《武器化的相互依赖关系》中指出的那样，在网络结构中，谁控制了网络节点谁就处于有利地位。

这种轮辐结构在很多领域都能找到。金融领域也许是最突出的例子。全球金融危机揭示了华尔街的中心地位：美国信贷市场某个偏远角落的违约现象居然可以污染整个欧洲银行系统。那次危机还揭示出国际银行业美元成瘾的现状，以及它们对获取美元流动性的高度依赖。美联储与特定伙伴国家的央行签署了流动性互换协议以满足它们的美元需求，这生动地展示出国际货币体系的本质是层级分明的。

对国际相互依赖关系的全新解读产生了两大后果。第一，鉴于日益增长的不对称性，学者们开始重新审视国际经济学。伦敦商学院教授埃莱娜•雷伊驳斥了一种流行的观点，即浮动汇率能阻隔美国货币周期的影响。她提出，各国只有严格控制信贷或实行资本管制，才能保护自身免受资本流入流出的不稳定因素影响。

基于类似的理由，国际货币基金组织首席经济学家吉塔·戈皮纳特也特别强调指出，大多数国家对美元汇率高度依赖。举个例子，虽然按道理说韩元兑巴西雷亚尔汇率是韩国和巴西之间双边贸易的主要决定因素，但在现实中由于两国贸易主要以美元计价，所以两国货币各自与美元的汇率比它们的双边汇率更重要。这一事实再次说明，美国货币政策对全世界所有国家而言都具有中心地位。

在这种背景下，保持开放和参与全球经济的收益分配越来越不平等。更多国家开始认为，这样下去只会导致分配结果不均，丧失宏观经济和金融自主权。也就是说，尽管保护主义是危险的愚行，但要为开放辩护也越来越难。

世界不再平坦所导致的另一个主要后果是关乎地缘政治的：更加不对称的全球经济体系会破坏多边主义，并引发一场国际网络节点控制权争夺战。法雷尔和纽曼对“武器化的相互依赖关系”有着恰当的论述：高效的经济结构正在发生变异，成为助长权力的结构。

美国总统唐纳德·特朗普利用美国金融体系和美元的中心地位，无情地强迫经贸伙伴奉行他对伊朗的单边制裁，这使全世界其他国家都认识到它们要为这种不对称的经济相互依赖关系付出政治代价。作为对策，中国（或许还有欧洲）将努力建立自己的网络，并牢牢控制其节点。多边主义可能再次成为这场战争的牺牲品。

一个崭新的世界正在浮现，经济与地缘政治将越来越难以分家。这个世界不同于多年前缪尔达尔、弗兰克和佩鲁的设想，也不再符合弗里德曼“平坦世界”的描述，而更像是《权力的游戏》中的世界。

Farewell, Flat World

Fifty years ago, the conventional wisdom was that rich countries dominated poor countries, and it was widely assumed that the former would continue getting richer and the latter poorer, at least in relative terms. Economists like Gunnar Myrdal in Sweden, Andre Gunder Frank in the United States, and François Perroux in France warned of rising inequality among countries, the development of underdevelopment, and economic domination. Trade and foreign investment were regarded with suspicion.

History proved the conventional wisdom wrong. The single most important economic development of the last 50 years has been the catch-up in income of a significant group of poor countries. As Richard Baldwin of the Geneva Graduate Institute explains in his illuminating book The Great Convergence, the main engines of catch-up growth have been international trade and the dramatic fall in the cost of moving ideas – what he calls the “second unbundling” (of technology and production). It was Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times who best summarized the essence of this new phase. The playing field, he claimed in 2005, is being leveled: The World is Flat.

This rather egalitarian picture of international economic relations did not apply only to knowledge, trade, and investment flows. Twenty years ago, most academics regarded floating exchange rates as another flattener: each country, big or small, could go its own monetary way, provided its domestic policy institutions were sound. The characteristic asymmetry of fixed exchange-rate systems was gone. Even capital flows were considered – if briefly – to be potential equalizers. The International Monetary Fund in 1997 envisaged making their liberalization a goal for all.

In this world, the US could be viewed merely as a more advanced, bigger country. This was an exaggeration, to be sure. But US leaders themselves often tended to play down their country’s centrality and its correspondingly outsize responsibilities.

Things, however, have changed again: from intangible investments to digital networks to finance and exchange rates, there is a growing realization that transformations in the global economy have re-established centrality. The world that emerges from them no longer looks flat – it looks spiky.

One reason for this is that in an increasingly digitalized economy, where a growing part of services are provided at zero marginal cost, value creation and value appropriation concentrate in the innovation centers and where intangible investments are made. This leaves less and less for the production facilities where tangible goods are made.

Digital networks also contribute to asymmetry. A few years ago, it was often assumed that the Internet would become a global point-to-point network without a center. In fact, it has evolved into a much more hierarchical hub-and-spoke system, largely for technical reasons: the hub-and-spoke structure is simply more efficient. But as the political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham L. Newman pointed out in a fascinating recent paper, a network structure provides considerable leverage to whoever controls its nodes.

The same hub-and-spoke structure can be found in many fields. Finance is perhaps the clearest case. The global financial crisis revealed the centrality of Wall Street: defaults in a remote corner of the US credit market could contaminate the entire European banking system. It also highlighted the international banks’ addiction to the dollar, and the degree to which they had grown dependent on access to dollar liquidity. The swap lines extended by the Federal Reserve to selected partner central banks to help them cope with the corresponding demand for dollars were a vivid illustration of the hierarchical nature of the international monetary system.

This new reading of international interdependence has two major consequences. The first is that scholars have begun reassessing international economics in the light of growing asymmetry. Hélène Rey of the London Business School has debunked the prevailing view that floating exchange rates provided insulation from the consequences of the US monetary cycle. She claims that countries can protect themselves from destabilizing capital inflows and outflows only by monitoring credit very closely or resorting to capital controls.

In a similar vein, Gita Gopinath, now the IMF’s chief economist, has emphasized how dependent most countries were on the US dollar exchange rate. Whereas the standard approach would make, say, the won-real exchange rate a prime determinant of trade between South Korea and Brazil, the reality is that because this trade is largely invoiced in dollars, the dollar exchange rate of the two countries’ currencies matters more than their bilateral exchange rate. Again, this result highlights the centrality of US monetary policy for all countries, big and small.

In this context, the distribution of gains from openness and participation in the global economy is increasingly skewed. More countries wonder what’s in it for them in a game that results in uneven distributive outcomes and a loss of macroeconomic and financial autonomy. True, protectionism remains a dangerous lunacy. But the case for openness has become harder to make.

The second major consequence of an un-flattened world is geopolitical: a more asymmetric global economic system undermines multilateralism and leads to a battle for control of the nodes of international networks. Farrell and Newman tellingly speak of “weaponized interdependence”: the mutation of efficient economic structures into power-enhancing ones.

US President Donald Trump’s ruthless use of the centrality of his country’s financial system and the dollar to force economic partners to abide by his unilateral sanctions on Iran has forced the world to recognize the political price of asymmetric economic interdependence. In response, China (and perhaps Europe) will fight to establish their own networks and secure control of their nodes. Again, multilateralism could be the victim of this battle.

A new world is emerging, in which it will be much harder to separate economics from geopolitics. It’s not the world according to Myrdal, Frank, and Perroux, and it’s not Friedman’s flat world, either. It’s the world according to Game of Thrones.

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