育灵童 论语 pdf:中国能实现外汇储备多元化吗？

China's US holdings ‘normal'

By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing 2010-03-10

The spectre of China as banker for the US and the prospect of Beijing dumping its vast holdings of US government debt is thought to keep some US congressmen awake at night.

They are unlikely to be convinced by yesterday's comments from Yi Gang, the man in charge of China's foreign exchange reserves, that Beijing does not wish to politicise its holdings of US Treasuries.

There was muted reaction in Washington where the Treasury department would not immediately comment.

“Most people in the US Treasury would subscribe to the view that the Chinese don't have much choice,” said Nicholas Lardy of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington think-tank. “So they probably won't give them too much credit for this announcement.

“For those who think China doesn't have much leeway to diversify, this just states the obvious.” He added, however, that “on the margins” this could make the US Treasury less likely to cite China as a currency manipulator in a report expected next month. According to most analysts and government officials in both countries, China does not really have the option of wielding foreign exchange purchases as a weapon in bilateral relations.

“China can diversify a bit on the margins but when it comes to investing the $30bn-$40bn (€22bn-€29bn, £20bn-£27bn) a month Beijing is accumulating in foreign exchange reserves, there are only two markets deep and liquid enough – the US and eurozone government bond markets,” according to Stephen Green, head of research in greater China for Standard Chartered Bank. “The euro market has shown brilliantly in recent months that it is not exactly risk-free.”

The prospect of China dumping dollars caused a flurry of excitement last month when the US Treasury published preliminary data showing that China cut its holdings of Treasuries by $34.2bn in December. Total holdings, according to revised figures, stood at $895bn at year end.

US monthly Treasury data is notoriously unreliable at showing exactly how much China or other countries are investing in US government bonds. One reason is that monthly surveys are unable to determine the ultimate buyer of Treasuries if they use third parties or subsidiaries in financial centres such as Hong Kong and London to make purchases.

China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange (Safe), which manages the country's $2,400bn in foreign exchange reserves, is known to route purchases through its offices in these two cities. Taking this into account, Standard Chartered estimates that China's US Treasury holdings actually stood at about $1,020bn at the end of 2009.

“Overall, it looks like China's US holdings, as a ratio of its total holdings, are still within the normal historical range” of about 68 per cent of its total reserves by the end of 2009, Mr Green said. “In other words, there has been no abnormal break with the dollar so far.”

For the past five years, Chinese financial officials have repeatedly made clear Beijing's intention to gradually diversify its holdings away from US dollar assets by reducing the proportion of such assets in its foreign exchange purchases. But analysts and officials such as Mr Yi point out that any rapid shift into another asset class, such as gold, would lead to soaring prices of that asset and could hurt China by decreasing the value of its own holdings.

“Over the medium term I think Safe would like to diversify away from one dominant asset class,” says Wang Tao, chief China economist at UBS. “But even if they want to diversify, they have to do it as inconspicuously as possible – otherwise others will move with them and they will be hurt as the largest holder of US Treasuries.”

Some analysts point out that thanks to higher US saving rates and a shrinking current account deficit, the overall proportion of US government debt held by domestic investors is rising and the proportion held *by countries such as China is shrinking, making any potential Chinese threat to dump dollars less frightening.

“China is sitting on a huge pile of dollars and the US economy is the only place big and solid enough to absorb it back,” said Derek Scissors, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington. “Any American financial dependence on China has almost vanished and the misconception that China is America's banker should vanish.”

中国能实现外汇储备多元化吗？

英国《金融时报》 吉密欧 北京报道 2010-03-10

据悉，对中国成为美国银行家的恐惧，以及北京方面有可能大举抛售所持的美国国债，令一些美国国会议员夜不能寐。

他们不太可能被中国国家外汇管理局局长易纲昨天的讲话说服，相信中国政府不希望把持有美国国债这件事政治化。

华盛顿方面的反应较为低调，美国财政部不愿立即置评。

华盛顿智库——彼得森国际经济研究所(Peterson Institute for International Economics)的尼古拉斯•拉迪(Nicholas Lardy)表示：“美国财政部多数官员都会赞同这样一种观点，即中国方面没什么其它选择。所以他们很可能不会太看重这一声明。”

“对于那些认为中国没有多少空间可分散投资的人而言，这只是在声明显而易见的事实。”但拉迪补充称，“在很小的程度上”，这可能会降低美国财政部在下月发布的报告中将中国列为汇率操纵者的可能性。中美两国大部分分析师和政府官员都认为，中国实际上并无可能将购汇当成双边关系中的武器。

渣打银行(Standard Chartered)大中华区研究部主管王志浩(Stephen Green)表示：“中国能在边缘稍稍多元化，但要说投资每月新增的300亿至400亿美元的外汇储备，只有两个市场具有足够的深度与流动性——美国及欧元区国债市场。而近几个月欧元市场已出色地证明，自己并不是无风险的。”

美国财政部上月发布的初步数据显示，去年12月，中国减持了342亿美元的美国国债。中国可能会抛售美元的消息引发了一阵骚动。根据修正后的数据，去年底中国总共持有8950亿美元美国国债。

美国财政部每月数据的不可靠是出名的，这些数据无法精确说明中国或其它国家到底投资了多少美国国债。原因之一在于，每月一次的调查无法确定国债的最终买家——他们可能是通过香港或伦敦等金融中心的第三方或子公司购买的。

管理着全国2.4万亿美元外汇储备的中国国家外汇管理局(Safe)，据悉就是通过这两个城市的办事处购买的。考虑到这一点，渣打估计，2009年末，中国实际持有的美国国债在1.02万亿美元左右。

王志浩表示，总体上，到2009年底，“中国所持美国国债占该国外汇储备总量的比率，看上去仍在正常的历史范围内”，约占总储量的68%。“换言之，迄今并未出现异常的摒弃美元的情况。”

过去5年，中国金融官员一再强调，中国政府打算逐渐将外汇储备多元化，缩减美元资产在外汇储备中的比例。但分析师和易纲等政府官员指出，任何迅速转向另一种资产类别（如黄金）的行为，都会导致这种资产的价格迅速攀升，进而可能降低中国所持资产的价值，从而令中国受损。

瑞银(UBS)中国区首席经济学家汪涛表示：“从中期来看，我认为外管局愿意多元化，不再主要持有某一资产类别。但即使他们想多元化，行事也必须尽可能隐秘——否则，其它人将随之而动，使中国作为美国国债的最大持有者受到损害。”

一些分析师指出，随着美国储蓄率上升，以及经常账户赤字不断缩减，由本土投资者持有的美国国债比例不断攀升，而由中国等其它国家持有的比例不断缩小，这使中国抛售美元的潜在威胁不那么可怕。

倾向保守的华盛顿美国传统基金会(Heritage Foundation)研究员史剑道(Derek Scissors)表示：“中国坐拥大量美元，而美国经济是唯一足够大、也足够稳定的地方来吸收这些资产。美国对中国的任何财务依赖几乎都已消失了，认为中国是美国银行家的误解也应该消失。”

China says it will keep buying US debt

By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing 2010-03-09

China’s investments in US Treasury bonds are continuing “every day” and should not be politicised, according to the head of China’s foreign exchange administration, which manages the country’s $2,400bn in foreign exchange reserves.

Chinese investments in US Treasuries were “market investment behaviour”, said Yi Gang, director of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, on Tuesday. “We do not want to politicise [these investments] ... We are a responsible investor and in the process of these investments we can definitely achieve a mutually beneficial result.”

Senior Beijing officials have voiced fears that US economic policies would see the value of the dollar suffer and since China is the biggest foreign holder of US Treasury bonds, there is speculation that the country is reducing its holdings of dollar assets.

The composition of China’s reserves is a state secret but Mr Yi said Tuesday that Safe had built a “moderately diversified currency structure including the US dollar, euro, Japanese Yen etc.”

Around two thirds of the reserves are invested in US dollar-denominated assets, according to analysts and people who work closely with Safe.

A decline in China’s direct holdings of US Treasuries in recent months has also led to the suggestion that Beijing may be deliberately cutting its exposure in retaliation for worsening US-China relations.

But analysts say the monthly Treasury data that show a dip in Chinese holdings recently do not capture the extent of Safe’s purchases through international banks and overseas financial centres such as London and Hong Kong.

They say when the data are revised at the end of the second quarter, China’s continuing purchases of US Treasuries will be evident.

The price of gold fell $3 in the hour after Mr Yi spoke because he said China would be “cautious” about adding more gold to its foreign exchange reserves and that gold would never become a big part of Safe’s overall portfolio.

He pointed out that any large gold purchases by China would quickly push up the price of metal in international markets.

China is the world’s biggest gold producer and Safe has been quietly buying from state-owned domestic producers, raising its total holdings from 600 tonnes in 2003 to 1,054 tonnes in the middle of last year.

Despite the financial crisis and Safe’s ill-timed 2008 diversification into global equities, Mr Yi said his agency had achieved “relatively good” returns from its management of the reserves over the last two years.

IT'S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW, BUT WHO YOU KNOW AND WHERE THEY ARE

By Tim Harford 2010-02-05

Alfred Marshall didn't have to wait for Silicon Valley to evolve before concluding that some places are hubs of intangible knowledge. In 1890, the renowned Cambridge economist opined that “great are the advantages which people following the same skilled trade get from near neighbourhood to one another. The mysteries of the trade become no mysteries; but are as it were in the air … if one man starts a new idea, it is taken up by others and combined with suggestions of their own; and thus it becomes the source of further new ideas.” Marshall knew that where you live and work affects what you learn and what you earn. One question that economists have struggled to answer, though, is exactly how and between whom knowledge spreads.

Marshall emphasised the spread of ideas between similar companies, but there are other plausible possibilities. Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, was more excited by the spread of ideas across industries, citing examples from the invention of the bra by Ida Rosenthal to the development of Scotch tape by 3M, originally a mining company.

More mundane forces could also be at work: maybe innovative cities are innovative because, with so many jobs and so many workers, it is easier for each worker to find the perfect job. City-dwellers may become smarter just because they are surrounded by some well-educated people.

I recently rediscovered an interesting working paper published in 2005 by Shihe Fu, then at Boston College but now working in Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in China. Fu used very detailed data from the 1990 Massachusetts census in an effort to track knowledge “in the air”; specifically, he looked at wages, block by block, and tried to work out whether he could find evidence of knowledge spillovers traced out by patterns of higher wages.

Recall the four possible hypotheses: knowledge spreads within industries; ideas are generated when different industries rub together; people learn from being around lots of smart people; or people benefit from the density of a labour market, which helps them find the perfect job.

Fu found evidence that all are true, but intriguingly, they operate at different distances and on different professions. For example, wages tend to be high near densely occupied blocks, but tail off within a mile or two. But Jacobs-style benefits from diversity raise wages at a distance of nine miles and more. Managers benefit from all four types of urban spillover, while hi-tech workers particularly benefit from the spread of ideas described by Marshall and Jacobs. Artists thrive on the pure diversity that Jacobs celebrated.

The big question hanging over Shihe Fu's research, it seems to me, is that the data supporting it are nearly 20 years old. Have e-mail and social networking changed the way that knowledge flows through cities? It seems that they must have, but quite how is far from obvious. After all, enhanced communications technology could simply concentrate wealth and innovation in fewer, world-dominating hubs.

My reading of the evidence is that technology has not killed distance – at least, not as far as the spread of ideas goes. Research in 2007 by Charles King, a political scientist, and two economists, Neil Gandal and Marshall Van Alstyne, found that e-mail's real value seemed to be communicating with colleagues in the same office. And two years ago I described research at Google – not exactly a technological dinosaur – which found that the best predictor of who knew what was where they sat. For all the wonders of the internet age, location is as important as ever.

近朱者赤，近墨者黑？

作者：英国《金融时报》专栏作家 蒂姆•哈福德 2010-02-05

艾尔弗雷德•马歇尔(Alfred Marshall)无需等到硅谷出现就已断定，有些地方将成为无形知识的中心。1890年，这位剑桥大学(Cambridge)的著名经济学家认为，“从事同一种技能型行业的人，彼此从行业区附近获得的好处是巨大的。行业的秘密不再成为秘密；而似乎成了公开之事……如果某人有了一种新思想，它会得到他人的采纳，并与他人的想法结合在一起，继而萌发出更多新思想。”马歇尔知道，你生活和工作的地方，会对你所学知识和所挣工资产生影响。但经济学家难以回答的一个问题是，知识到底是如何传播的，以及在哪些人之间传播。

马歇尔着重阐述了思想如何在彼此类似的公司之间传播。然而，思想传播也存在其它看似合理的可能方式。《美国大城市的死与生》(The Death and Life of Great American Cities)的作者简•雅各布斯(Jane Jacobs)就对思想在不同行业之间的传播更感兴趣，她列举出了伊达•罗森莎(Ida Rosenthal)发明胸罩、3M公司开发透明胶带等诸多例子。3M最初是一家矿业公司。

还可能有更为寻常的因素对思想传播产生影响：或许创新型城市具有创新性，是因为它们拥有如此之多的就业岗位和劳动者，使每位劳动者都更容易找到理想工作。或许，城市居民变得更加聪明，只是因为他们周围都是一些受过良好教育的人。

最近，我重新注意到傅十和(Shihe Fu)在2005年发表的一篇饶有趣味的工作论文。傅十和当时在波士顿学院(Boston College)工作，现在则执教于中国西南财经大学(Southwestern University of Finance and Economics)。他利用了1990年马萨诸塞州人口普查非常详细的数据，力求跟踪知识的“传播”；具体而言，他研究了各街区居民的工资数据，试图弄明白，他是否有可能遵循工资升高的模式找到知识溢出的证据。

回顾一下4项可能假设：知识在行业内传播；思想在不同行业相互碰撞时萌发；接近大量聪明人士能促进人们增长见识，；还有，人们会从“高度密集”的劳动力市场中受益，这样的市场会帮助他们找到理想工作。

傅十和找到了证据，证明上述假设全部属实。但有趣的一点是，这些效应的作用距离和所影响的职业各不相同。举例来说，在居民稠密街区的附近，工资往往较高，但一两英里以外，工资水平就降下来了。然而，多元化带来的雅各布斯式的好处，却可提升9英里（甚至更远）范围内的工资水平。管理人士可从上述全部4种城市知识溢出中受益，而高科技劳动者尤其能够从马歇尔和雅各布斯描述的“思想传播”获利。对艺术家们有益的，则只有雅各布斯推崇的多元化。

在我看来，傅十和研究中存在的最大问题在于，为其结论提供支持的数据已有近20年的历史。电子邮件和社交网络是否已经改变知识在城市中传播的方式？答案似乎是肯定的。但它们到底是如何改变的，却决非一眼就能看清的。毕竟，更先进的通信技术可能只是令财富和创新集中在数量更为稀少的、在全球居主导地位的中心。

我对证据的解读是，技术并没有拉近距离——至少就思想传播而言是这样的。政治学家查尔斯•金(Charles King)、经济学家尼尔•甘达尔(Neil Gandal)和马歇尔•范阿尔斯泰恩(Marshall Van Alstyne)在2007年进行的研究发现，电子邮件的真正价值似乎在于沟通同一间办公室里的同事。两年前，我曾介绍过谷歌(Google)的一项研究——当时该公司还算不上一家技术巨头。这项研究发现，若想预测哪些人知道哪些事情，最好的方法是了解他们身处何方。尽管互联网时代诞生了无数奇迹，地点仍然一如继往地重要。

What the wealth of nations is really built upon

By Tim Harford 2010-01-05

It is an old question: why are some countries rich and others poor? Sir Partha Dasgupta, a hugely accomplished economist, born in Dhaka and educated in Delhi and Cambridge, is as well qualified as anyone to come up with an answer – which he did, delivering this year's Royal Economic Society public lecture.

Dasgupta began by inviting his audience, many of whom were A-level students, to consider the lives of two girls – Becky, an American, and Desta, an Ethiopian.

Becky lives in a country with a gross domestic product per head of $46,000, life expectancy of 78 years and near-universal adult literacy. GDP per head in Desta's country is $780; life expectancy is 53 years, adult literacy 36 per cent, and most women spend about 15 years bearing or taking care of children, with average fertility of more than five live births per woman.

Familiar as this sort of data is, the numbers never fail to shock. As Dasgupta pointed out, Ethiopia is not notably richer than it was 5,000 years ago. Why?

Economists haven't been short of answers. Rich countries have more physical capital – better roads, bigger buildings, more machines. They also have more human capital – their citizens are better educated and trained, and healthier. And they have more technological capital, with more scientists, more advanced technology and more intellectual property.

But these are symptoms of something deeper. After all, as China is now demonstrating, it is possible to expand all three types of capital at speed. Many poor countries don't. Why not?

The fashionable answer is that rich countries have better institutions. It sounds profound, but nobody really agrees on what it means. Dasgupta pointed out that in a variety of circumstances – from buying fresh-seeming food at a supermarket to getting married, from walking the streets in safety to writing a country's constitution – we need to be able to rely on other people to play their part in a deal that may be explicit but is often entirely implicit. And he devoted much of his lecture to answering the question of when we can expect other people to keep to these agreements and quasi-agreements.

Relying on game theory analysis, Dasgupta reached two conclusions. The first is that stable societies – that is, where cheats can be found and punished, if only by a refusal to do business with them in future – are a precondition for successful institutions. If every interaction is a one-off, co-operation is impossible, and all those wonderful investments in machinery, education and innovation will simply never happen.

The second conclusion was that co-operation is extremely fragile. Dasgupta's game theory suggested that even a successful, co-operative society is always at risk of breaking down. “It is easier to destroy institutions than to build them,” he argued, and cited the Watts riots and the decline of many pre-modern civilisations. The credit crisis is, arguably, another example.

If true, this is very disturbing: it suggests that we should perhaps spend less effort thinking about how to develop poor countries, and more effort holding together our own fragile societies.

I was not totally convinced. Perhaps I am complacent, but the past 200 years of economic history contain far more examples of poor countries becoming rich than of rich countries becoming poor.

As Sir Partha patiently explained his algebra to a gaggle of admiring schoolchildren, I was left with more questions than answers about why we trust each other and our institutions, and how such trust is created and destroyed. That, I think, was exactly his aim.

富国究竟因何而富?

作者：英国《金融时报》专栏作家 蒂姆•哈福德 2010-01-05

这是一个古老的问题：为什么有些国家富裕，而有些国家贫穷呢？取得巨大成就的经济学家帕萨•达斯古普塔(Partha Dasgupta) 与所有人一样，完全有资格对此做出解释——他在今年皇家经济学会(Royal Economic Society)的公共演讲中给出了答案。达斯古普塔出生于达卡，在德里和剑桥接受教育。

达斯古普塔首先邀请他的听众（许多是A-Level学生）思考两个女孩的生活：一个是美国女孩贝姬(Becky)，另一个是埃塞俄比亚女孩德斯塔(Desta)。

在贝姬生活的国家里，人均国内生产总值(GDP)达4.6万美元，人的预期寿命为78岁，几乎所有成年人都识字。而在德斯塔生活的国家里，人均GDP为780美元，人口预期寿命为53岁，有读写能力的成人占36%，大多数女性花15年左右的时间生育或照看孩子，平均每个妇女生育5个以上孩子。

虽然这类数据已经耳熟能详，但它们总是会令人感到吃惊。正如达斯古普塔指出的那样，埃塞俄比亚并不比5000年前更富裕，这是为什么呢？

经济学家一直不缺少答案。富国拥有更多的物质资本——更好的道路、更大的建筑和更多的机械。它们还拥有更多的人力资本——它们的居民接受的教育和培训更好，也更加健康。他们拥有更多的技术资本——更多的科学家、更先进的技术和更多的知识产权。

但这些是某种更深层次问题的表症。毕竟，就像目前中国所展示的那样，这三种资本都有可能迅速扩张。许多穷国却未能扩张，这又是为什么呢?

流行的答案是富国有更好的制度。这听起来比较深奥，但没有人就其含义真正达成一致。达斯古普塔指出，在各种情况下——从在超市购买看似新鲜的食品到结婚，从安全地在街上行走到起草国家宪法——我们必须能够信任他人会在协议中扮演自己的角色（这种协议可能是明确的，但往往相当含蓄）。达斯古普塔将演讲的大部分时间用来回答这个问题：什么时候我们可以预期其他人会遵守这些协议或准协议？

按照博弈论分析， 达斯古普塔得出两个结论。第一，稳定的社会——在这个社会，欺诈行为能够被发现，并且只要未来拒绝与其做生意，就能使其受到惩罚——是成功制度的先决条件。如果所有互动都是一次性的，那就不可能进行合作，而所有那些在机械、教育和创新方面的惊人投资就永远不会发生。

第二，合作是极端脆弱的。达斯古普塔的博弈论表明，即使是一个成功的合作社会也往往存在崩溃的可能性。他表示：“破坏制度比建立制度更容易。”并以华特暴动(Watts riots)和许多前现代文明的衰落为例进行了说明。可以说，信贷危机是另一个例子。

如果达斯古普塔所言属实，这就非常令人不安了：它表明，我们或许应该花更少的精力来考虑如何发展穷国，而应更多地关注如何维系我们自己的脆弱社会的完整。

我没有完全信服这种观点。或许我有点自满，但过去20年的经济史中有更多穷国变成富国的例子，而不是相反。

正当达斯古普塔爵士耐心地向一群充满仰慕之情的在校生解释他的代数理论时，我对于如下问题更加感到迷惑不解：我们为何信任彼此、信任我们的体制，以及这种信任是如何被创造和破坏的。我认为，这正是他的目的所在。

Why getting complicated increases the wealth of nations

By Tim Harford 2009-07-14

One of the defining characteristics of the modern economy is that it's awfully complicated. Even a fairly humble product such as a shirt might incorporate cotton from west Africa, oil from Indonesia to make the polyester in the button (manufactured in China), and designs sketched out by an Italian using American computer software. Then there is the sheer number of products: Eric Beinhocker, author of The Origin of Wealth, reckons there are probably 10 billion distinct products and services available in a modern economic environment such as London, Tokyo or New York. It's a guess, but a fairly educated one. Beinhocker also estimates that for a traditional hunter-gatherer society, the number is closer to 300.

This would probably not have surprised Adam Smith, who emphasised the importance of specialisation as a source of the wealth of nations. Specialisation and complexity are closely linked: an economy with more specialists is one that requires more teamwork and more distinct interactions between individual activities.

Leaving aside a few complexity theorists such as Beinhocker, this is not the way that most economists think about what makes countries rich. It is not that they disagree, simply that they tend to focus on more easily measurable aggregates, such as the total stock of capital and labour.

Actually trying to measure economic complexity is a tricky business, but it is not impossible. César Hidalgo, a young physicist specialising in the mapping of networks, and Ricardo Hausmann, a development economist, are both researchers at Harvard's Center for International Development, where they have been grappling with the problem. One obvious measure of complexity is how many types of product a country exports in significant quantities, from a list of more than 770 categories. Exports are a meaningful indicator because if you export a product it means someone else is willing to pay for it. A further measure of complexity is whether a country's exports are uncommon (many countries export T-shirts; few export aircraft parts).

Hidalgo and Hausmann discovered a striking pattern: countries that export only a few products tend to export fairly commonplace stuff, while those that export a large range also make the kind of specialised products that few others produce.

It is possible to zoom in further. Malaysia and Pakistan seem, at first glance, equally complex, each exporting 104 product types. But many of Malaysia's exports are also exported by mighty Japan, whereas Pakistan's exports have very little in common with those of Japan. In general, Malaysia tends to export some of the products that very complex, diversified countries export, suggesting that it has a more complex economy than Pakistan. A mathematical application of such methods produces the top six most complex economies: Japan, Germany, Sweden, the UK, Finland and the US. Malawi, Cameroon and Western Samoa bring up the rear. Intriguingly, it seems that economies that are more complex than their level of income would suggest have a tendency to catch up with a spurt of fast growth; the complexity may indicate potential that is easily unlocked. Hidalgo cites South Korea as an example.

Development economists may find themselves paying more attention to such issues in future. We know very little about how to encourage an economy to become more complex and acquire new product capabilities. That may explain why we still have so much to learn about how to make poor countries rich.

哪种经济体更富有

作者：英国《金融时报》专栏作家 蒂姆•哈福德 2009-07-14

现代经济体的一个标志性特征就是其高度的复杂性。即便是像衬衫这样较为低端的产品，也可能综合了西非的棉花、印度尼西亚的石油——用于生产纽扣（中国制造）中的聚酯成分——以及某个意大利人使用美国电脑软件绘制而成的设计图。此外，现代经济体的产品数量也多得惊人：《财富起源》(The Origin of Wealth)作者埃里克•拜因霍克(Eric Beinhocker)估计，在伦敦、东京及纽约等现代经济环境中，可能存在100亿种不同的产品和服务。这虽是个猜想，但不乏理论与事实依据。拜因霍克还估计，在一个传统的采猎社会，这个数字更接近于300。

亚当•斯密(Adam Smith)或许不会对此感到意外，他曾强调，专业化作为国家财富源泉意义重大。专业化与复杂性紧密相关：一个拥有更多专业人士的经济体需要更多的团队合作、以及在个体活动之间进行更多不同形式的互动。

撇开拜因霍克等少数复杂性理论家不谈，多数经济学家在考虑国家致富途径时并没有想到复杂性。不是因为他们不认同这一点，只不过他们倾向于关注那些更易衡量的总量，比如资本及劳动力的总存量。

真要衡量经济的复杂性，会是件棘手的事，但并非不可能办到。专攻网络映射的年轻物理学家塞萨尔•伊达尔戈(César Hidalgo)与发展经济学家里卡多•豪斯曼(Ricardo Hausmann)一直在哈佛大学国际发展中心(Harvard's Center for International Development)设法解决这一难题，这两人都是该中心的研究员。衡量复杂性的一项显而易见的指标是，在770多个类别的产品目录中，一个国家大量出口的产品有几类。出口之所以是个有意义的指标，是因为你出口一件产品，就意味着有人愿意掏钱购买这件产品。复杂性的另一项衡量指标是，一个国家出口的产品是否不同寻常（有许多国家出口T恤，但只有少数几个国家出口飞机零部件）。

伊达尔戈和豪斯曼发现了一个饶有兴趣的规律：那些仅出口少数几类产品的国家，出口的往往是些大路货，而那些出口类别繁多的国家，则同时也是那种其它国家很少生产的专业产品的制造国。

我们可以更具体的探讨这个问题。初看上去，马来西亚和巴基斯坦的经济复杂程度似乎相当，两国均出口104类产品。但马来西亚出口的许多产品与强国日本存在重叠，而巴基斯坦的出口产品与日本鲜有共同之处。总体而言，马来西亚出口的，往往是那些高度复杂且多元化的经济体所出口的部分产品，这一点表明，该国经济的复杂程度要高于巴基斯坦。基于这种方法，通过数学计算可以得出，复杂程度排名前六的经济体分别是：日本、德国、瑞典、英国、芬兰和美国；马拉维、喀麦隆和西萨摩亚名列榜尾。耐人寻味的是，经济体的复杂程度若高出其收入水平，似乎就意味着，该经济体有可能实现井喷式增长并赶超他国；而一个经济体“复杂”或许意味着，它具有可轻松释放出的发展潜力。伊达尔戈表示，韩国就是个例子。

发展经济学家未来可能需要更多的关注这类问题。在如何促进一个经济体提高其复杂程度并取得生产新产品的能力方面，我们所知甚少。这或许可以说明，在如何让穷国致富这个问题上，我们为何还有太多东西要学。