英国万古杂志网站于2024年6月7日发表题为《经济学入门》的文章。以下观点不代表任何译者立场，现将全文翻译如下：
Economics 101
经济学入门
Why introductory economics courses continued to teach zombie ideas from before economics became an empirical discipline
为何经济学入门课程仍在教授经济学成为实证学科之前老掉牙的内容
Walter Frickis an editor and writer interested in economics, technology, forecasting, and the future of media. He’s held senior editorial roles at Harvard Business Review and Quartz, and has written for The Atlantic, the BBC, MIT Technology Review and The Boston Globe, among others. He lives in Washington, DC.
Walter Frick是一位专注于经济、科技、预测和媒体未来的编辑和作家。他曾在《哈佛商业评论》和Quartz担任高级编辑职务，其文章还见诸于《大西洋月刊》、BBC、《麻省理工科技评论》和《波士顿环球报》等多家媒体。他现居华盛顿特区。
What happens to the job market when the government raises the minimum wage? For decades, higher education in the United States has taught economics students to answer this question by reasoning from first principles. When the price of something rises, people tend to buy less of it. Therefore, if the price of labour rises, businesses will choose to ‘buy’ less of it – meaning they’ll hire fewer people. Students learn that a higher minimum wage means fewer jobs.
如果政府提高最低工资，就业市场会发生什么变化？数十年来，美国高等教育一直教导经济学学生用第一原理来回答这个问题。如果某物价格上涨，人们往往会减少购买。因此，如果劳动力价格上涨，企业会选择“购买”更少的劳动力——也就是说，他们会雇用更少的人。学生们学到的是，更高的最低工资意味着更少的工作岗位。
But there’s another way to answer the question, and in the early 1990s the economists David Card and Alan Krueger tried it: they went out and looked. Card and Krueger collected data on fast-food jobs along the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania, before and after New Jersey’s minimum wage increase. The fast-food restaurants on the New Jersey side of the border were similar to the ones on the Pennsylvania side in nearly every respect, except that they now had to pay higher wages. Would they hire fewer workers in response?
然而，还有另一种回答这个问题的方法。20世纪90年代初，经济学家David Card和Alan Krueger尝试了这种方法：实地考察。Card和Krueger收集了新泽西州和宾夕法尼亚州边界沿线快餐店的数据，观察了新泽西州提高最低工资前后的情况。新泽西州边界一侧的快餐店在几乎所有方面都与宾夕法尼亚州一侧的相似，唯一的区别是它们现在必须支付更高的工资。它们会因此雇用更少的工人吗？
‘The prediction from conventional economic theory is unambiguous,’ Card and Krueger wrote. It was also wrong. Fast-food restaurants in New Jersey didn’t hire fewer workers – instead, Card and Krueger found that employment slightly increased. Their paper set off a hunt for other ‘natural experiments’ that could rigorously test economic theory and – alongside other research agendas like behavioural economics – transformed the field.
Card和Krueger写道：“传统经济理论的预测是非常清楚的。”然而，这个预测不对。新泽西州的快餐店并没有雇用更少的工人——相反，Card和Krueger发现就业略有增加。他们的论文引发了对其他”自然实验"的探索，这些实验能严格检验经济理论，并与行为经济学等其他研究议程一起，彻底改变了这个领域。
Over the past 30 years, PhD-level education in economics has become more empirical, more psychological, and more attuned to the many ways that markets can fail. Introductory economics courses, however, are not so easy to transform. Big, synoptic textbooks are hard to put together and, once they are adopted as the foundation of introductory courses, professors and institutions are slow to abandon them. So introductory economics textbooks have continued to teach that a higher minimum wage leads to fewer people working – usually as an example of how useful and relevant the simple model of competitive markets could be. As a result of this lag between what economists know and how introductory economics is taught, a gulf developed between the way students first encounter economics and how most leading economists practise it. Students learned about the virtues of markets, deduced from a few seemingly simple assumptions. Economists and their graduate students, meanwhile, catalogued more and more ways those assumptions could go wrong.
过去30年里，经济学博士级别的教育变得更加实证化、更注重心理学，也更关注市场失灵的诸多方式。然而，经济学入门课程却不那么容易改变。大型综合教材难以编写，一旦被采用为入门课程的基础读物，教授和院校就不太愿意放弃它们。因此，经济学入门教材继续教导学生，更高的最低工资会导致就业人数减少——通常将其作为竞争市场简单模型如何有用和相关的例证。由于经济学家所知与入门经济学教学内容之间存在这种滞后，学生初次接触经济学的方式与大多数顶尖经济学家的实践方式之间产生了鸿沟。学生们学习的是市场的优点，这些优点是从几个看似简单的假设推导出来的。与此同时，经济学家和他们的研究生则在不断列举这些假设可能出错的方式。
Today, 30 years after Card and Krueger’s paper, economics curriculums around the world continue to challenge the facile view that students used to learn, in which unfettered markets work wonders. These changes – like spending more time studying market failures or emphasising individuals’ capacity for altruism, not just selfishness – have a political valence since conservatives often hide behind the laissez-faire logic of introductory economics. But the evolution of Econ 101 is not as subversive as it may sound. Instead, it reflects the direction the wider discipline has taken toward empiricism and more varied models of economic behaviour. Econ 101 is not changing to reflect a particular ideology; it is finally catching up to the field it purports to represent.
如今，在Card和Krueger论文发表30年后，世界各地的经济学课程仍在挑战学生过去所学的那种肤浅观点，即不受约束的市场能创造奇迹。这些变化——比如花更多时间研究市场失灵，或强调个人具有利他而非仅仅自私的能力——具有政治色彩，因为保守派经常躲在入门经济学的自由放任逻辑后面。但经济学入门课程的演变并不像听起来那么具有颠覆性。相反，它反映了整个学科朝着实证主义和更多样化的经济行为模型发展的方向。经济学入门课程的变化并非为了反映某种特定意识形态，而是终于赶上了它所在的学科领域。
In 2019, Harvard University’s introduction to economics course, Ec10, changed hands. The respected conservative economist and textbook author Greg Mankiw handed it over to Jason Furman and David Laibson. Furman was chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under the US president Barack Obama. Laibson, also a textbook author, focuses his research on behavioural economics – which he prefers to describe as ‘psychology and economics’. As part of this transition, the course textbook shifted from Mankiw’s popular Principles of Economics (5th ed, 2015) to Economics (2nd ed, 2018) by Laibson, Daron Acemoglu of MIT, and John List of the University of Chicago.
2019年，哈佛大学的经济学入门课程Ec10易主。备受尊敬的保守派经济学家和教材作者Greg Mankiw将其交给了Jason Furman和David Laibson。Furman曾在奥巴马政府担任经济顾问委员会主席。同样是教材作者的Laibson，其研究重点是行为经济学——他更愿意将其描述为“心理学和经济学”。作为这一过渡的一部分，课程教材从Mankiw广受欢迎的《经济学原理》（2015年第5版）转变为Laibson、麻省理工学院的Daron Acemoglu和芝加哥大学的John List合著的《经济学》（2018年第2版）。
Their goal in revising the course was threefold, says Furman. First, the course should be coherent and helpful for students, even if they never take another economics course. Second, it should speak to issues students care about – climate change, poverty and inequality, for example. Third, it should reflect the way economics is practised today, which means more empiricism, more psychology, and more attention to market failures and public policy.
Furman表示，他们修订课程的目标是三重的。首先，即使学生不再修读其他经济学课程，这门课也应该连贯且对他们有帮助。其次，它应该涉及学生关心的问题——例如气候变化、贫困和不平等。第三，它应该反映当今经济学的实践方式，这意味着更多的实证、更多的心理学，以及更多对市场失灵和公共政策的关注。
Historically, introductory courses have reflected the way that the field of economics evolved, says David Martin, an economist at Harvard and section leader for the course. Theory came first: 18th-century philosophers like Adam Smith and David Ricardo sketched out principles of how markets operate; 20th-century economists like Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow turned those ideas into mathematical models.
哈佛大学经济学家、该课程的分组讨论负责人David Martin说，从历史上看，入门课程反映了经济学领域的演变方式。理论先行：18世纪的哲学家如亚当·斯密和大卫·李嘉图勾勒出市场运作的原理；20世纪的经济学家如保罗·萨缪尔森和肯尼思·阿罗将这些想法转化为数学模型。
This is science as described by the theoretician. Since then, a subtle but evident shift has taken place
Two developments in the late 20th century changed the field’s direction. First, computers made data much easier to find and to analyse. Second, advances in statistical theory led to new methods of inferring cause and effect from data. Those methods ushered in what economists dubbed the ‘credibility revolution’, and in 2021 three of its architects, including Card, received a Nobel Prize.
这是理论家所描述的科学。此后，一种微妙但明显的转变发生了。20世纪末的两个发展改变了该领域的方向。首先，计算机使数据更容易获取和分析。其次，统计理论的进步导致了从数据中推断因果关系的新方法。这些方法引发了经济学家称之为”可信度革命"的变革，2021年，包括Card在内的三位革命先驱获得了诺贝尔奖。
The empirical turn in economics upended the discipline, but textbooks have lagged behind. Publishers typically require that authors not change more than 15 per cent for any new textbook edition to avoid upsetting instructors, which effectively capped the pace at which Econ 101 could evolve. The 1997 edition of Mankiw’s introductory textbook, for example, includes a section on observation and the scientific method. It also quotes Albert Einstein’s claim that ‘The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking’ and describes Isaac Newton seeing an apple fall and being motivated to develop a theory of gravity. This is science as described by the theoretician. Since then, a subtle but evident shift has taken place. In the textbook that Harvard uses, first published in 2015, empiricism is elevated to one of the three core principles of economics, alongside ‘optimisation’ and ‘equilibrium’. Their book includes sections on ‘evidence-based economics’ in every chapter.
经济学的实证转向颠覆了这门学科，但教材却落后了。出版商通常要求作者在新版教材中不要改变超过15%的内容，以避免让教师感到不适，这实际上限制了经济学入门课程演变的速度。例如，1997年版的Mankiw入门教科书包含了一节关于观察和科学方法的内容。它还引用了爱因斯坦的话：”整个科学不过是对日常思维的一种改进”，并描述了牛顿看到苹果落地而受到启发发展引力理论的故事。这是理论家所描述的科学。从那时起，一种微妙但明显的转变发生了。在哈佛现在使用的教科书中（首次出版于2015年），实证主义被提升为经济学的三个核心原则之一，与“优化”和“均衡”并列。他们的书在每一章都包含了“基于证据的经济学”部分。
Undergraduates in Harvard’s Ec10 read the Card-Krueger minimum wage paper in the second week of class. It’s introduced in a session on empiricism in economics, and the students complete a simplified version of the analysis, calculating the difference in employment at fast-food restaurants in New Jersey and Philadelphia before and after New Jersey raised the minimum wage. The lesson is that ‘economic theories are only as good as the predictions they allow us to make about behaviour,’ says Martin. ‘The way we generally teach is facts first,’ he says of the course. Where theory once led, it now follows.
哈佛Ec10课程的本科生在第二周就阅读Card-Krueger的最低工资论文。这篇论文出现在经济学实证主义的课程中，学生们完成了一个简化版的分析，计算新泽西州提高最低工资前后，新泽西州和费城快餐店就业情况的差异。Martin说，这堂课的要旨是“经济理论的好坏取决于它能让我们对行为做出怎样的预测”。他说：“我们通常的教学方式是先讲事实。”理论曾经先行，现在却跟随其后。
The theory side of Econ 101 is changing, too. The workhorse of introductory economics courses is the model of a perfectly competitive market. Students were traditionally introduced to its principles by reasoning about a consumer good with which they were already familiar, like pizza or ice cream. If a slice of pizza is free, how many will you take? (Several.) What if each slice costs $4? (Fewer.) What if each slice costs $40? (None at all.) This armchair reasoning forms the basis of a demand curve, where the quantity of a good (pizza) is higher when its price is lower.
经济学入门课程的理论部分也在发生变化。入门课程的主力是完全竞争市场模型。传统上，学生们通过推理一种他们已经熟悉的消费品（如披萨或冰激凌）来了解原理。如果一片披萨是免费的，你会拿多少？（几片。）如果每片4美元呢？（少拿点。）如果每片40美元呢？（一片也不拿。）这种纸上谈兵的推理构成了需求曲线的基础，即商品（披萨）的数量在价格较低时较高。
The exercise is then repeated for the supply side where things work in reverse: the higher the price, the more people will find it worthwhile to make and sell pizza. And the point where supply and demand meet is the market equilibrium. The model assumes that buyers and sellers are all rationally optimising according to their preferences; they act so as to maximise their ‘utility’.
然后，这个练习在供给方面重复进行，但情况相反：价格越高，越多的人会觉得制作和售卖披萨是值得的。供给和需求相遇的点就是市场均衡。这个模型假设买家和卖家都在根据自己的偏好理性地优化；他们的行为旨在最大化自己的“效用”。
Harvard students still learn this model, in the second week of class. But the third week of Ec10 kicks off a series of three lectures challenging its key premises – in particular, the idea that people are purely selfish, perfectly rational maximisers. Instead, over three lessons, students are introduced to psychology, game theory and ‘social economics’ – which includes questions of fairness, trust and altruism.
哈佛的学生仍然在第二周学习这个模型，但Ec10第三周开始了一系列的三门课，挑战这个模型的关键前提——特别是人们纯粹自私、完全理性地追求最大化的观念。相反，在这三堂课中，学生们被引入心理学、博弈论和“社会经济学”——包括公平、信任和利他主义等问题。
Students learn that, even when people are motivated and trying to optimise, they often aren’t perfectly rational
学生们认识到，即便人们有动机且试图优化决策，他们也往往无法做到完全理性。
In one class, students play a game called the ‘Keynesian beauty contest’, where everyone picks a number between one and 100. The rule is that the student whose pick is closest to two-thirds of the class average wins $10. What number should they pick? If guesses are random between one and 100, the average will be around 50, and two-thirds of 50 is 33⅓. But is 33⅓ a good guess? If everyone does that math, they’ll all guess 33 – and two-thirds of 33 is 22. But what if everyone does that math? Then the best guess would be two-thirds of 22, and so on. If everyone is purely rational and believes everyone else to be rational too, then the best guess is zero. That, in game theory lingo, is the Nash equilibrium.
在一堂课上，学生们参与了一个名为“凯恩斯选美”的游戏。每个人需选择1到100之间的一个数字，最接近全班平均数三分之二的人可赢得10美元。他们应该选什么数字呢？如果猜测随机分布在1到100之间，平均数约为50，其三分之二是33⅓。但33⅓是个好选择吗？若所有人都这么算，大家都会猜33——而33的三分之二是22。如果每个人都想到这一点呢？那么最佳猜测就是22的三分之二，如此循环往复。若人人都完全理性，且相信他人也同样理性，那么最佳猜测就是零。这在博弈论中被称为纳什均衡。
In reality, the most common guess is 33, followed by 22; the third most-common guess is zero. The point of the exercise is that the game-theoretic prediction fails to match up with the real-world behaviour. Students learn that, even when people are motivated and trying to optimise, they often aren’t perfectly rational (even Harvard students).
现实中，最常见的猜测是33，其次是22；第三常见的是零。这个练习旨在说明，博弈论预测与现实行为存在差异。学生们由此了解到，即便是有动机且试图优化的人（哪怕是哈佛的学生），也往往无法做到完全理性。
Students also play the dictator game, where one student is given money and has the option to keep it all for themselves or to share it with another student. Most people share at least some of their windfall, says Martin, showing that ‘even when given the opportunity with no repercussions to be super greedy, a lot of people will give some money to the other person.’
学生们还参与了“独裁者游戏”，一名学生获得一笔钱，可以全部留给自己，也可以与另一名学生分享。马丁教授指出，大多数人至少会分享一部分，这表明“即使有机会毫无顾忌地表现得极度贪婪，许多人仍会给予他人一些钱”。
These exercises challenge the notion that human behaviour is mostly selfish and rational. Such challenges to ‘Homo economicus’ have long had a place in economics textbooks – in the very back. Courses mirrored the textbooks, with ‘back of the textbook’ lectures on topics like altruism coming at the end of the semester.
这些练习挑战了人类行为主要由自私和理性驱动的观念。长期以来，对“经济人”假说的质疑一直存在于经济学教科书中——但往往被安排在最后。课程设置也与教科书相呼应，将诸如利他主义等“教科书后部”的主题安排在学期末。
Ec10 integrates this material throughout the course and teaches it alongside more classic models. ‘From the first second we teach [the competitive model of supply and demand], we say we’re going to teach tons of ways it fails or goes wrong,’ says Furman. What was once supplementary is now a central part of Econ 101.
如今，哈佛大学的Ec10将这些内容贯穿始终，与更传统的模型并行教授。弗曼教授表示：”从一开始讲授（供需竞争模型）时，我们就强调会教授大量该模型失效或出错的情况。"曾经被视为补充的内容，现已成为经济学入门课程的核心部分。
Harvard is not alone in its shifting approach. In fact, for a team of economists in the UK, it doesn’t go far enough. A decade ago, they set out to ‘bring the back of the textbook to the front’ and, most controversially, to relegate the classic model of a perfectly competitive market to the back of the book.
哈佛大学并非唯一改变教学方法的学府。事实上，对英国的一群经济学家而言，这种改变还不够彻底。十年前，他们着手将"教科书后部的内容搬到前面"，更具争议的是，他们将完全竞争市场的经典模型降格到了书的后部。
‘The spark was the financial crisis,’ says Wendy Carlin, an economist at University College London, of the unorthodox textbook she helped to create. Students wanted to know what had gone wrong in the global economy, and introductory courses struggled to provide an answer. Margaret Stevens was having the same problem at the University of Oxford: many of her students were undergraduates in philosophy, politics and economics – and finding that the latter couldn’t answer the questions they had about the post-crisis economy.
伦敦大学学院的经济学家温迪·卡林谈到她参与创作的这本非传统教科书时说：“金融危机是我们的动力。”学生们想了解全球经济出了什么问题，而入门课程难以给出答案。牛津大学的玛格丽特·史蒂文斯也面临同样的困境：她的许多学生主修哲学、政治学和经济学，却发现经济学无法回答他们对后危机时代经济的疑问。
In truth, the examples in economics textbooks were ‘chosen to fit the model’ being taught, says Carlin. Whereas ‘when researchers work on a problem, we start with a question in the world – and often some descriptive data, some hunches,’ she says. ‘And then we step back and think: “Which economic tools and which concepts are going to help us make progress on this question?”’
卡林指出，事实上，经济学教材中的例子“是为了契合所教授的模型而选择的”。而“当研究人员着手解决问题时，我们从现实世界的问题出发——通常是一些描述性数据和直觉。然后我们退一步思考：’哪些经济学工具和概念能帮助我们在这个问题上取得进展？’”
Carlin and Stevens teamed up with Sam Bowles, an economist at the Santa Fe Institute, to launch a new, open-source economics textbook published by CORE Econ and called The Economy 1.0. The first edition launched online in 2017. Earlier this year, the project – now with dozens of contributors from around the world – published the second version of its microeconomics curriculum.
卡林和史蒂文斯与圣塔菲研究所的经济学家萨姆·鲍尔斯合作，推出了一本名为《经济学1.0》的新型开源经济学教科书，由CORE Econ出版。第一版于2017年在线发布。今年初，这个项目——现已有来自世界各地的数十位贡献者——出版了微观经济学课程的第二个版本。
They wanted to write a textbook that would draw in students and keep them motivated
他们想写一本能吸引学生、鼓动他们不断学下去的教材
For Bowles, the project recalled his correspondence with Martin Luther King Jr in the late 1960s. They’d met through anti-war activities, and King sent Bowles a list of economic questions he wanted help in answering. ‘I opened the list when it came,’ says Bowles. ‘I didn’t have a clue about how to answer any of them. It wasn’t just that I didn’t know the answers – I didn’t know where to look.’
对鲍尔斯来说，这个项目让他想起了20世纪60年代末与马丁·路德·金的通信。他们因反战活动而相识，金曾给鲍尔斯发来一份他想要解答的经济学问题清单。鲍尔斯回忆道：“收到清单时我打开看了，发现自己对其中任何一个问题都毫无头绪。不仅是不知道答案，甚至不知道该从何处着手。”
Carlin, Stevens and Bowles had all been teachers before they were economists: Carlin has a degree in education; Stevens taught high-school mathematics; and Bowles taught high school in Nigeria. They wanted to write a textbook that would draw in students and keep them motivated.
卡林、史蒂文斯和鲍尔斯在成为经济学家之前都有教学经验：卡林拥有教育学学位；史蒂文斯曾教授高中数学；鲍尔斯则在尼日利亚教过高中。他们希望编写一本能吸引学生并保持他们学习动力的教科书。
The result is a textbook unlike the ones most economics students encounter. CORE Econ begins by charting the ‘hockey stick’ trendline of both economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions. The first chapter spans technological innovation, Thomas Malthus’s theory of population growth, and colonialism. It is now used by almost 400 universities on six continents, according to CORE Econ, and in just over half of UK universities that offer an economics degree.
这本教材与大多数经济学学生所接触的截然不同。根据CORE Econ的数据，该教材现已被六大洲近400所大学采用，覆盖了英国过半数提供经济学学位的高校。CORE Econ开篇即勾勒出经济增长与温室气体排放的“曲棍球棒”趋势线。第一章涵盖了技术创新、托马斯·马尔萨斯的人口增长理论以及殖民主义等内容。
In CORE, the classic model of a competitive market does not make an entrance until Chapter 8. ‘What CORE is doing in micro[economics] is trying to bring to the intro classroom what grad students have been taught for a long time,’ says Bowles.
在CORE教材中，传统的竞争市场模型直到第八章才首次出现。鲍尔斯指出：“CORE在微观经济学方面所做的，是将长期以来仅在研究生课程中教授的内容引入入门课堂。”
For example, in the CORE textbook, firms are introduced as having the power to set prices. That might sound obvious but it’s not how things work in the typical introductory model of a perfectly competitive market. In that model, there are lots of identical sellers and the market sets a price. Firms can choose to either sell at that market price or not sell at all. Imagine a street with several very similar pizza parlours: if one tries to charge a much higher price than the others, customers will notice and stop shopping there, and that parlour will have to lower its price.
例如，CORE教材在介绍企业时，强调它们具有定价权。这听起来似乎理所当然，但在典型的完全竞争市场入门模型中并非如此。在那种模型中，市场上存在大量同质卖家，价格由市场决定。企业只能选择是否按市场价格销售。想象一条街上有几家相似的披萨店：如果其中一家大幅提价，顾客会注意到并转向其他店，迫使该店降价。
At least that’s the old Econ 101 logic. CORE puts that at the back of its approach to signify that it’s the special case rather than the norm, says Bowles. Instead, the CORE pedagogy teaches a model where firms sell different goods, and each has at least some power to dictate prices and wages. This choice has implications for more than prices. By eschewing the perfect competition model, CORE introduces the idea that power is a central aspect of market interactions.
这是旧版经济学入门课程的逻辑。鲍尔斯表示，CORE将其置于方法论的末尾，以表明这是特例而非常态。相反，CORE的教学方法采用了一种模型，其中企业销售不同的商品，每家企业都至少拥有一定程度的价格和工资决定权。这一选择不仅影响价格，还引入了权力作为市场互动核心要素的概念。
CORE includes many other topics that, once, may not have made it even into the back of a textbook, including forced labour and the gender wage gap. Pirate ships of the 18th century are used to explore the role that institutions play in deciding who gets paid how much. The most recent version contains a unit on colonialism and its role in the industrial revolution.
CORE还包含了许多过去可能连教科书后部都难以涉及的主题，如强迫劳动和性别工资差距。18世纪的海盗船被用来探讨制度在决定报酬分配中的作用。最新版本还增加了一个单元，讨论殖民主义及其在工业革命中的角色。
It’s tempting to judge CORE and even Harvard’s Ec10 in ideological terms – as an overdue response or countermeasure to a laissez-faire approach. But the evolution of Econ 101 is about more than politics. (Despite its focus on traditionally more progressive topics, CORE has been criticised for being insufficiently ‘heterodox’, according to Stevens.) By elevating empiricism and by teaching multiple models of the economy, students in these new curriculums are learning how social sciences actually work.
人们很容易从意识形态的角度评判CORE，甚至是哈佛的Ec10课程——将其视为对放任自由主义方法的迟来回应或对策。但经济学入门课程的演变不仅仅关乎政治。（尽管CORE关注更多传统上被视为进步的主题，史蒂文斯指出它仍被批评为不够“异端”。）通过强调实证主义并教授多种经济模型，这些新课程让学生了解社会科学的真实运作方式。
‘A model is just an allegory,’ says the economist David Autor in his intermediate microeconomics course at MIT. For decades, Econ 101 taught one major allegory, in which markets worked well of their own accord, and buyers and sellers all emerged better off. Government, when it was mentioned at all, was frequently portrayed as an overzealous maintenance man – able to solve some problems but also meddling in markets that were fine on their own.
麻省理工学院中级微观经济学课程的教授大卫·奥特指出：“模型只是一种故事。”数十年来，经济学入门课程教授的主要故事是，市场能能够自行良好运作，买卖双方都能获益。政府即便被提及，也常被描绘成一个过于热心的维修工——能解决一些问题，但也会干预本可自行运转的市场。
That is not how most contemporary economists think. Instead, they see the competitive market as one model among many. ‘The multiplicity of models is economics’ strength,’ writes the Harvard economist Dani Rodrik in Economics Rules (2015). ‘[W]e have a menu to choose from and need an empirical method for making that choice.’ As the Econ 101 curriculum catches up, economics students are finally getting a taste of the variety that the field has to offer.
这并非当代大多数经济学家的观点。相反，他们将竞争市场视为众多模型中的一种。哈佛大学经济学家丹尼·罗德里克在《经济学规则》（2015）中写道：“模型的多样性是经济学的优势。我们有一个可供选择的菜单，需要一种实证方法来做出选择。”随着经济学入门课程的更新，经济学学生终于得以体验该领域的丰富多样性。
As much of an improvement as the new curriculums are, they raise a puzzle. The traditional Econ 101 course was, for all its flaws, coherent and memorable. Students came away with a clear framework for thinking about the world. What does the new Econ 101 leave students with, other than an appreciation that the world is complicated, and that data is important?
尽管新课程有诸多改进，但也引发了一个疑问。传统的经济学入门课程虽有缺陷，但逻辑连贯好记。学生们能够获得一个清晰的世界观框架。新的经济学入门课程除了让学生认识到世界的复杂性以及数据的重要性，还能给学生留下什么？
Carlin’s answer is that ‘the workhorse [of Econ 101] is that actors make decisions.’ Modelling those decisions remains a central part of economics. What’s changed is the way decision-makers are represented: they can be selfish, but they can also be altruistic. They can be rational, but they can also be biased or blinkered. They are social and strategic, and they interact with one another not just with the faceless market. Models help approximate the most salient features of these interactions, and students learn several different ones to guide their understanding. They also learn that models mustfit the facts, and that a crucial part of economics is leaving the armchair and observing what is going on in the world.
卡林的回答是：“（新版）经济学入门课程的核心是决策者如何做出决策。”对这些决策的建模仍是经济学的核心部分。变化之处在于对决策者的描述：他们可以自私，也可以利他；可以理性，也可以有偏见或局限性；他们具有社会性和策略性，不仅与无形的市场互动，也与彼此互动。模型有助于近似这些互动中最显著的特征，学生们学习多种不同模型来指导理解。他们还学会模型必须符合事实，经济学的关键部分在于走出象牙塔，观察现实世界的运作。
