雅思阅读材料盘点：美国人缺乏信任的经济后果

　　Yet despite their customers’ distaste, big firms mint huge profits. One explanation is declining competition over the past 20 years. If markets are working, firms that are perceived to behave badly lose market share. In concentrated industries this discipline is lacking. Two recent scandals in oligopolistic bits of the economy illustrate the point. Wells Fargo, a bank, created millions of fake accounts, yet in the three months to June its year-on-year profits rose by 5%. In April a United Airlines passenger was assaulted, causing an outcry. Its underlying profits later rose by 5%, too. In such industries Americans are inured to mistreatment.

　　然而，尽管不受消费者认同，大公司还是创造了巨大的利润。一个解释是过去20年来竞争越来越少。如果市场正常发挥作用，公众眼中行为不良的公司将失去市场份额。这个规律不适用于集中的行业。最近在寡头垄断行业中发生的两桩丑闻就说明了这一点。富国银行虚开了数百万个账户，但在截至6月份的三个月中，其利润同比增长了5%。4月一名美联航乘客遭到殴打，引发强烈抗议。然而自此之后公司的潜在利润上涨了5%。在这样的行业里，美国人已经逆来顺受惯了。

　　Trust between firms, and between firms and investors, is more resilient, but there is evidence of greater wariness. Banks charge corporate borrowers a spread of 2.6 percentage points above the federal-funds rate, compared with 2.0 points in the 20 years before the crisis. The equity-risk premium, or the annual excess return that investors demand to hold shares rather than bonds, is 5.03 points, against a pre-crisis average of 3.45 points, notes Aswath Damodaran of the Stern School of Business at NYU.

　　公司之间以及公司与投资者之间的信任更为坚挺，但证据表明它们也变得更加谨慎了。银行向贷款企业收取高于联邦基金利率2.6个百分点的差价，而危机前20年这个差价只有2.0个百分点。纽约大学斯特恩商学院的阿斯沃斯·达摩达兰(Aswath Damodaran)指出，股票风险溢价(投资者持有股票而非债券时要求的年度超额收益)为5.03个百分点，而危机前的平均水平为3.45个百分点。

　　The median firm in the S&P 500 holds 62 cents of cash on its balance-sheet per dollar of gross operating profit, up from 45 cents in 2006 (this yardstick excludes America’s giant technology companies, which hoard money). In a sign that more corporate deals end in tears, litigation costs are rising. The revenues of legal firms rose by 103% in 1997-2012, according to the Census Bureau, more quickly than nominal GDP growth, of 85%. And spending on corporate lobbying, a signal that firms think politicians are corruptible, has risen faster than GDP, too.

　　标准普尔500指数的中位数公司每产生1美元毛营业利润，就会在资产负债表上持有62美分的现金，高于2006年的45美分(这个标准不包括囤积现金的美国技术巨头)。面对越来越多的企业交易惨淡收场的迹象，诉讼费用正在上升。根据美国人口调查局的统计，1997至2012年律所收入增长了103%，高于85%的名义GDP增长率。企业游说支出(体现企业认为政客可收买的程度)也比GDP增长更快。

　　In the long term it is possible that firms could become as mistrustful as consumers. Though individual companies can gain from cronyism, overall confidence will fall if there is sustained political meddling in the courts and regulatory system. And companies as well as people can be trapped into doing business with monopolies that are inept or shifty. In 2016 Facebook said that for the past two years it had overstated how long its users watched videos for, but advertisers have little choice but to stick with the social-media firm. Its profits rose by 71% in the latest quarter.

　　长此以往，企业有可能变得和消费者一样多疑。虽然个别公司可以从裙带主义中获益，但如果法院和监管体系中持续存在政治干预，整体信心会下降。公司以及人们都可能不得不和无能或是诡诈的垄断公司打交道。2016年，Facebook称它在过去两年中夸大了用户观看视频的时间，但广告客户别无选择，只能继续使用这家社交媒体公司。最近一季度它的利润增长了71%。

　　If the bleak predictions of observers such as Mr Luce come true, how might America Inc adjust? One guide is the work of Ronald Coase, an economist who theorized that the boundary of a firm is set according to whether an activity is best done in-house or can be outsourced to the market. If counterparties are less reliable, and contracts expensive to enforce, firms will become “vertically integrated”, bringing their supply chain in-house.

　　如果卢斯等观察家的晦暗预测成真，美国公司可能如何做出调整呢?一个指导方针是经济学家罗纳德·科斯(Ronald Coase)的研究成果，他提出了一个理论，称企业的边界取决于某项活动是该内部完成还是外包给市场。如果交易对手不再可靠，执行合同的费用高昂，企业将“垂直一体化”，将供应链收进内部。

　　If there is deeper decay of America’s legal system and greater political corruption, then firms would go further and spread “horizontally” too, expanding into new industries where their political contacts, and access to favors and capital can be used. This is how business works in much of the emerging world.

　　如果美国的法律体系腐烂更深，政治腐败更甚，企业也会进一步“横向拓展”，进入新的行业以利用其政治联系和可以获得的照顾和资本。这正是大部分新兴市场的经营方式。