Part 1: The Formula for Economic Succes

What determines which countries prosper and which countries don’t? What determines different countries’ future growth rates? For our investment purposes we look at relationships between causes and effects that we hope will be useful to others in answering these questions.

什么决定哪个国家繁荣，哪个国家不行？什么决定了不同国家未来的增长率？为了我们的投资目的，我们来看看我们希望对他人回答这些问题有用的原因和影响之间的关系。

While many people have provided opinions about why countries succeed and fail economically, they have not shown linkages between causes and effects. As a result, their opinions can be misleading. Often, even commonly agreed-upon indicators of what is good for an economy have not been properly analyzed and correlated with subsequent results. For example, everyone knows that having a more educated population is better than having a less educated population, so naturally we hear that improving education is important to improving productivity. However, indicators of the cost-effectiveness of education are lacking and correlations of the factors with subsequent growth don’t exist, at least to my knowledge. That is dangerous. For example, if policy makers simply educate people without considering the costs and paybacks of that education, they will waste resources and make their economies less productive even though we will become more educated people. To make matters worse, the views of those who influence polices typically reflect their ideological inclinations (e.g., being politically left or right) which divides people. For this reason, I believe that objective good indicators that are correlated with subsequent results are needed so that the facts speak for themselves and help people reach agreement about what should be done. That is what I believe I provide here. The economic health indicators that I will show would have predicted the subsequent 10-year real growth of the 20 countries shown over the last 65 years within 2% of the realized growth about 80% of the time and within 1% half of the time, with the average miss around 1%.

虽然许多人提出了为什么国家在经济上成功和失败的意见，但并没有显示出原因和影响之间的联系。因此，他们的意见可能会误导。通常，对经济有利的甚至共同商定的指标尚未得到适当的分析，并与随后的结果相关联。例如，每个人都知道，拥有受过较高教育水平的人口比受教育程度较低的人群要好一些，所以我们自然地听说，改善教育对于提高生产力至关重要。然而，教育的成本效益指标缺乏，至少根据我的了解，这些因素与后续增长的相关性并不存在。那很危险例如，如果政策制定者只是在不考虑这种教育的成本和回报的情况下教育人们，即使我们成为受过更多教育的人，他们也将浪费资源，使经济减少生产力。更糟糕的是，影响政策的人的意见通常反映了他们分裂人心的意识形态倾向（例如政治左派或右派）。因此，我认为需要与后续结果相关的客观良好指标，以便事实说明自己，并帮助人们就应该做什么达成一致。这就是我相信我在这里提供的。我将展示的经济健康指标将预测在过去65年中显示的20个国家的后续10年实际增长率在实现增长率的2％左右，约80％的时间内和1％半的时间内，平均失误约1％。

While I believe that the body of evidence I will show you is compelling, I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers or expect people to blindly follow what is presented here without poking at it. On the contrary. I am putting these cause-effect relationships on the table to help foster the debate to bring about progress. I hope that people of divergent views will explore and debate how the economic machine works by looking at both the logic and the evidence presented here, then see what it portends for the future, and then explore what can be done to make the future better. Having said that, we are confident enough in these estimates to bet on their accuracy, which we do in our investments.

虽然我相信我将向你展示的证据是令人信服的，但我绝对不会声称拥有所有的答案，也不希望人们盲目追随这里提出的内容而不用戳。反之。我把这些因果关系放在桌子上，以帮助促进辩论来取得进展。我希望有不同意见的人们将探讨和辩论经济机器的工作原理，看看这里提出的逻辑和证据，然后看看它对未来的看法，然后探讨可以做些什么来使未来更好。话虽如此，我们对这些估计有足够的信心打赌我们在投资中所做的准确性。

The Determinants of Economic Health Are Timeless and Universa. 经济健康的决定因素是永恒的和普遍的

As with human bodies, I believe that the economies of different countries have worked in essentially the same ways for as far back as you can see so that the most important cause-effect relationships are timeless and universal. In this section I review these cause-effect relationships and look at many countries in different timeframes to show how they worked. I will lay these out for you to consider. I don’t believe that it’s good enough to just show the correlations between changes in these factors and their outcomes. I believe that it’s necessary to be so clear on the fundamental cause-effect relationships that it seems obvious that they must be so; otherwise you can’t be confident that a relationship is timeless and that you aren’t missing something. I will first present the concepts and then take you into the indicators to show how they worked in the past and what they portend for the future.

与人体一样，我认为，不同国家的经济基本上是以相同的方式进行的，因为最重要的因果关系是永恒的和普遍的。在本节中，我将回顾这些因果关系，并在不同时间范围内查看许多国家，以显示它们的运作方式。我会把这些出来给你考虑。我不认为只是显示这些因素的变化与其结果之间的相关性是足够好的。我认为，有必要对根本因果关系如此清楚，似乎很明显，他们必须如此;否则你不能相信一个关系是永恒的，而且你没有缺少某些东西。我将首先介绍这些概念，然后带您进入指标，以显示他们过去的工作以及他们对未来的看法。

What are the Keys to Success. 成功的关键是什么？

I Will Start With a Top-Down Perspective: 我将从自上而下的观点开始：

As with health, many factors (reflected in many statistics) produce good and bad outcomes. You can approach them by looking down on the forest or building up from the trees. In presenting them I wrestled with whether to start at the top and work our way down through all the pieces or start with all the pieces and work ourselves up to the big picture. I chose to approach this from the top down as that's the perspective that I'm more comfortable with. I prefer to simplify and then flesh out the picture. Receiving information presented this way will require you to be patient with the sweeping generalizations I make until I get down to the particulars that make them up, which will show both the norms and the exceptions.

与健康一样，许多因素（反映在许多统计数据中）产生好的和坏的结果。您可以通过俯视森林或从树上建造来接近他们。在展示他们时，我是否从顶部开始，通过所有的作品走下坡路，或者从所有的作品中开始，并把自己整理出来。我选择了从上到下的方式，因为这是我更加舒适的观点。我更喜欢简化，然后梳理出图片。接收以这种方式呈现的信息将要求您对我所做的全面概括表示耐心，直到我了解这些信息，这将显示规范和例外点。我更喜欢简化，然后梳理出图片。接收以这种方式呈现的信息将要求您对我所做的全面概括表示耐心，直到我了解这些信息，这将显示规范和例外。

Productivity Influences on Growth Are Intertwined With Debt Influences: 生产力对增长的影响与债务影响交织在一起：

While my objective is to look at productivity in this section, in doing so I wanted to tie that into looking at the drivers of growth over the next 10 years, which is affected by debt as well as the drivers of productivity. In other words, productivity influences on growth and debt influences on growth are unavoidably entangled. As explained in "How the Economic Machine Works," while productivity growth is ultimately what matters for long-term prosperity, and the effects of debt cycles cancel out over time, the swings around that productivity long-term trend arising from debt cycles cancel out over such long amounts of time (upwards of 100 years because of long-term debt cycles) that it is impossible to look at growth periods without debt cycles playing a role in driving the outcomes. Of course, when one lengthens the observed timeframe, the shorter-term volatility that is due to debt swings diminishes in importance. We chose to look at rolling 10-year periods of 20 countries which gave us a sample size of 159 observations (where we measure every 5 years).

虽然我的目标是在这一部分中研究生产力，但是在这样做的时候，我想把它看成是未来10年的增长动力，这也受到债务的影响作为生产力的驱动力。换句话说，生产力对增长的影响和债务对增长的影响是不可避免的纠缠不清的。如“经济机器如何运作”所述，生产力增长最终对长期繁荣至关重要，债务循环的影响随着时间的推移而消失，围绕债务循环产生的生产率长期趋势的波动取消了在长期债务周期长达100年的时间内，如果没有债务循环在推动结果方面发挥作用，就不可能看待增长期。当然，当延长观察时间时，由于债务波动引起的短期波动在重要性上减弱。我们选择了20个国家的10年时间，为我们提供了159个观察值（我们每5年测量一次）的样本量。

The Big Picture: 大局：

Stepping away from the wiggles of any given day, and looking from the top down, one can see that the big shifts in economic growth are about two-thirds driven by productivity and one-third driven by indebtedness. "Luck" (e.g., having a lot of resources when the resources are valuable) and "conflict" (especially wars) are also drivers.

Productivity 生产力

A country’s production (GDP) will equal its number of workers times the output per worker (productivity). One can increase one’s productivity either by working harder or by working smarter. Productivity is driven by how cost-effectively one can produce, so relative productivity—i.e., competitiveness—will have a big effect on relative growth. In a global economy those producers who are more competitive will both 1) sell more in their own country and other countries, and 2) move their production to countries where they can produce more cost- effectively. Likewise, investors will follow these opportunities.

一个国家的生产（GDP）将等于其工人人数（每个工人的生产力）。通过更加努力地工作或者更聪明地工作，可以提高生产力。生产力是以成本效益高的方式推动的，所以相对生产力 - 即竞争力 - 将会对相对增长产生很大的影响。在全球经济中，具有更强竞争力的生产者将同时在1个国家和其他国家销售更多的产品，2）将生产转移到能够更具成本效益的生产国家。同样，投资者也会跟随这些机会。

Competitiveness (i.e., relative productivity levels) is driven by what you get relative to what you pay in one country versus another. Countries are just the aggregates of the people and the companies that make them up. As you know with the individuals you hire and from the products you buy, those that offer the most value for money are the most competitive and do better than those that don't.

Specific Indicators: 具体指标：

Since people are the largest cost of production, it follows that those countries that offer the best “value” (i.e., the most productive workers per dollar of cost) will, all else being equal, experience the most demand for their people. That is why the per-hour-worked cost differences of educated people (i.e., their income after adjusting for hours worked each year) is one of the best indicators of productivity. Other obvious and important factors that influence productivity include cost of uneducated people, levels of bureaucracy, attitudes about work, raw material costs, lending and capital market efficiencies—i.e., everything that affects the value of what is produced relative to the cost of making it. In other words, there is a world market for productive resources that increases the demand, and hence the growth rates, for the countries that are most competitive because of “the cost of production arbitrage.” That cost of production arbitrage has been a big driver of growth—in fact overwhelmingly the largest. To reiterate, the magnitude of this competitiveness arbitrage is driven more by the cost of the workers relative to how hard they work, their education, and investment levels, than by anything else. These variables characterize the value of hiring a worker in a given country and doing business there (i.e., what you pay for what you get).

由于人是最大的生产成本，因此，那些提供最佳“价值”的国家（即每美元成本最高生产率的工作人员）将一切平等，经历对他们人民的最大需求。这就是为什么受过教育的人的每小时工作成本差异（即每年工作时间调整后的收入）是生产力的最佳指标之一。影响生产力的其他明显和重要的因素包括未受过教育的人的成本，官僚程度的水平，工作态度，原材料成本，贷款和资本市场效率 - 即影响所产生的价值相对于成本的一切。换句话说，生产性资源的世界市场由于“生产套利成本”而对竞争最激烈的国家的需求增加了增长率。生产套利成本一直是增长的主要动力 - 其实绝大多数是最大的。要重申，这种竞争力套利的规模更多地来自于工人的成本相对于他们的工作成本，教育程度和投资水平而不是别的。这些变量表征了在某一国家聘请一名工人的价值，并在那里开展业务（即，您所获得的所需费用）。

Of course, barriers to the flow of trade and capital (like China's closed door policies until the early 1980s, geographic isolation, etc.) can stand in the way of people, companies and countries being allowed to compete. As these barriers break down (e.g., transportation becomes cheaper and quicker, telecommunications reduce impediments to intellectual competition, etc.) or increase (e.g., trade barriers are put up), the ability to arbitrage the costs of production, and in turn the relative growth rates, is affected.

当然，贸易和资本流动的障碍（如中国的封闭政策，直到20世纪80年代初，地理隔离等）可能阻碍人，公司和国家被允许竞争。随着这些障碍的崩溃（例如，交通变得越来越便宜，电信减少了智力竞争的障碍等）或增加（例如，贸易壁垒），套利生产成本的能力，反之亦然增长率受到影响。

While countries that operate efficiently will grow at faster paces than countries that operate inefficiently, the countries that will grow the fastest are those that have big inefficiencies that are disposed of. As an example, in the 1970s and 1980s, China had a well-educated, intelligent labor force that could work for cheap, but faced a closed door policy. Opening the door unleashed China's great potential. Looking forward, while the United States is relatively efficient, it would not grow as fast as a Russia (i.e., which has competitively priced educated people with low debt) if Russia could significantly reduce its barriers to productivity (e.g., corruption, lack of development of its debt/capital markets, lack of investment, lack of innovation, bad work attitudes, lack of adequate private property laws, etc.). That is why I am most optimistic about inefficient countries that are undertaking the sort of reforms that are described in this section.

虽然高效率经营的国家比起经济效率低下的国家的增长速度要快一些，但增长最快的国家是那些处理效率低下的国家。例如，20世纪70年代和80年代，中国有一个受过良好教育，聪明的劳动力，可以廉价工作，但面临封闭政策。开门打开了中国的巨大潜力。展望未来，虽然美国的效率相对较高，但如果俄罗斯大幅度减少生产力的障碍（例如腐败，缺乏发展），俄罗斯就不会像俄罗斯那样快速增长（即具有低廉教育水平的受过高等教育的人）的债务/资本市场，缺乏投资，缺乏创新，工作态度不好，私有财产法律不足等）。这就是为什么我对那些正在进行本节所述改革的低效国家最为乐观。

Culture is one of the biggest drivers of productivity. 文化是生产力的最大推动力之一

It's intuitive that what a country's people value and how they operate together matters for a country's competitive position. Culture influences the decisions people make about factors such as savings rates or how many hours they work each week. Culture can also help explain why a country can appear to have the right ingredients for growth but consistently underperform, or vice versa. For example, in Russia, which has a lot of untapped potential, the culture that affects lifestyles (e.g., alcoholism, the low drive to succeed, etc.) causes it to substantially under-live its potential, while in Singapore, where high income levels make their labor relatively uncompetitive, their lifestyles and values (e.g., around working, saving and investing) allow them to realize a higher percentage of their potential. While lots of elements of culture can matter, the ones that I find matter most are: 1) the extent to which individuals enjoy the rewards and suffer the penalties of their productivity (i.e., the degrees of their self-sufficiency), 2) how much the people value savoring life versus achieving, 3) the extent to which innovation and commercialism are valued, 4) the degree of bureaucracy, 5) the extent of corruption and 6) the extent to which there is rule of law. Basically, countries that have people who earn their keep, strive to achieve and innovate, and facilitate an efficient market-based economy will grow faster than countries that prioritize savoring life, undermine market forces through highly redistributive systems, and have inefficient institutions. To be clear, I am not making any value judgments. It would be illogical for me to say that people who savor non-work activities are making a mistake relative to people who love working. It is however not illogical for me to say that people who savor non-work activities are likely to be less productive than those who love working.

。直观地说，一个国家的人民的价值观以及它们如何运作对于一个国家的竞争地位来说是重要的。文化影响人们对储蓄率或每周工作多少小时等因素的决定。文化也可以帮助解释为什么一个国家似乎可以拥有正确的增长成分，但是一直落后大市，反之亦然。例如，在有潜力的未来很多的俄罗斯，影响生活方式的文化（如酒精中毒，低成功率等）导致其潜力大幅度下降，而在新加坡，高收入国家水平使他们的劳动相对无竞争力，他们的生活方式和价值观（例如，围绕工作，储蓄和投资）使他们能够实现更高的潜力百分比。虽然很多文化元素都很重要，但我认为最重要的是：1）个人享受奖励的程度，并受到生产力的惩罚（即自给自足的程度），2）如何许多人认为品味生活与实现，3）创新和商业主义被重视的程度，4）官僚程度，5）腐败程度，6）法治程度。基本上，拥有人力，实现创新，促进高效市场化经济的国家，要比优先考虑生活，通过高度再分配制度破坏市场力量，制度效率低下的国家快速增长。要明确，我没有作出任何价值判断。对于非工作活动的人来说，相对于爱工作的人来说，这是错误的。对于非工作活动的人来说，不喜欢工作的人的生产力可能不那么有效。

Indebtednes. 负债

At the risk of repeating myself too many times, I will review the way I look at debt cycles because I carry that perspective into my calculations in explaining 10-year growth rates.

由于有重复我自己太多次的风险，我会回顾一下我看债务周期的方式，因为我把这个观点纳入了我十年增长率的计算。

如所解释的那样，短期波动更多是由于债务周期而不是生产力，但这种波动随着时间的推移而消除，因为信贷允许人们在获得它们时消耗的多于生产，并且迫使人们消费的时间少于他们产生的消费支付回来关于长期生产力的调查是由债务周期驱动的。记住，在没有信贷的经济体系中，增加支出的唯一方法是产生更多的收益，但是在一个有信贷的经济体中，你也可以通过借款来增加支出。这创造了循环。当债务水平相对于收入水平较低并且正在上升时，上行周期是自强不息的，因为上涨的支出增加了收入上升和净值上涨，这提高了借款人的借款能力，从而允许更多的购买和支出等但是，由于债务不能比金钱和收入永远上涨，所以债务增长有限制。

Think of debt growth that is faster than income growth as being like air in a scuba bottle—there is a limited amount of it that you can use to get an extra boost, but you can't live on it forever. In the case of debt, you can take it out before you put it in (i.e., if you don't have any debt, you can take it out), but you are expected to return what you took out. When you are taking it out, you can spend more than is sustainable, which will give you the appearance of being prosperous. At such times, you and those who are lending to you might mistake you as being creditworthy and not pay enough attention to what paying back will look like. When debts can no longer be raised relative to incomes and the time for paying back comes, the process works in reverse.

认为债务增长速度比收入增长速度快，就像像潜水艇一样，空气有限，你可以用来增加额外的收益，但是你永远不会生活在这个水平上。在债务的情况下，你可以把它拿出来（即，如果你没有任何债务，你可以拿出来），但是你会收回你所取出的东西。当你把它拿出来的时候，你可以花费更多的可持续性，这样会让你变得繁荣昌盛。在这样的时候，你和那些借给你的人可能会错误地认为你是值得信赖的，没有足够的关注回报的样子。当债务不能再相对收入提高和偿还时间到来时，流程相反。

You can get a picture of where countries stand in the long-term debt cycle and the likelihood of debt being a support or detriment to future growth by assessing the past reliance on debt to support incomes and the attractiveness of taking on new debt. For these reasons I expect countries that have a) low amounts of debt relative to incomes, b) debt growth rates that are low in relation to income growth rates and c) easier monetary policies to grow faster over the next ten years than countries with d) high amounts of debt relative to incomes, e) debt growth rates that are high in relation to income growth rates and f) tighter monetary policies. That is true with one exception, which is when adequate financial intermediaries don't exist. Institutions and capital markets that facilitate these transactions have to be in place for the system to work. For that reason, when forecasting long-term future growth rates we have taken into consideration the levels of development of countries' financial intermediaries.

您可以通过评估过去依赖债务来支持收入和承担新债务的吸引力，了解各国在长期债务周期中的地位和债务是否支持未来增长的可能性。由于这些原因，我预计那些与收入相关的债务相对较低的国家，b）与收入增长率相关的债务增长率较低; c）在未来十年内，货币政策将更容易增长。）相对于收入的大量债务，e）与收入增长率相关的高增长率的债务增长率; f）更严格的货币政策。一个例外是真实的，当时没有足够的金融中介。促进这些交易的机构和资本市场必须到位，使系统工作。因此，在预测长期未来增长率时，我们考虑了各国金融中介机构的发展水平。

Luck and Wars: As mentioned, they can play a role. For example, the US having shale gas was lucky. Potential conflicts should always be watched. While to some extent these can be anticipated, they are not part of our formula and they don't typically matter much—i.e., they are exceptional.

运气和战争 ：如前所述，他们可以发挥作用。例如，有页岩气的美国是幸运的。应该始终注意潜在的冲突。虽然在某种程度上这些可以预料到，但它们不是我们公式的一部分，它们通常并不重要 - 即它们是例外。

The Interaction of These Forces is Driven By Human Nature. 这些力量的相互作用是由人的本性驱动的

While productivity and indebtedness can be thought of as separate concepts, they are ultimately a function of the choices people make and their psychology. I briefly touched on culture as an influence on these choices and their outcomes. Also, I observe important shifts in attitudes from one generation to the next which are due to their different experiences. In Part 3, "The Rises and Declines of Economies Over the Last 500 Years," I show how psychology tends to shift as countries move through their economic life cycles. It is worth touching on this influence here before I delve into an examination of what all the economic health indicators are pointing to for the 20 major economies.

虽然生产力和债务可以被认为是单独的概念，但它们最终是人们选择和心理学的选择的函数。我简短地谈到文化对这些选择及其结果的影响。此外，我观察到由于不同的经历，一代到下一代的态度发生了重大转变。在第三部分“过去500年的经济崛起与衰落”中，我展示了随着各国经济生活周期的转移，心理学倾向如何转变。在深入研究20个主要经济体所指出的所有经济健康指标之前，值得深入了解这一影响。

In addition to productivity and the debt cycles I spoke about, there tends to be a psychologically motivated cycle that occurs as a function of one's past level of prosperity and whether one experienced improving or worsening economic conditions. When a country is poor and focused on survival, its people who have subsistence lifestyles don't waste money because they value it a lot and they don't have any debt to speak of because savings are short and nobody wants to lend to them. Even though the country's labor is low-cost, it is not competitive, and the lack of investment stymies future productivity gains. Some emerge from this stage and others don't, with culture and location being two of the biggest determinants. For those that do—either because a country removes a big barrier like being closed to the world (as China did in 1980) or simply because a more gradual evolution makes their labor attractive—a virtuous cycle can kick in. At this stage, the investments are not just inexpensive; the stock of infrastructure and other physical capital is also typically low and there is lots of room to adopt existing technologies that can radically improve the country's potential. Leveraging up (increasing one's indebtedness) can feed back into higher productivity and competitiveness gains, which produce high returns that attract more investment at a time when the capacity to leverage is high. The key is that this money and credit must be used to produce investments that yield enough returns to pay for the debt service and finance further growth (so that incomes rise as fast as or faster than debts). Yet as countries grow wealthier, more and more of the credit tends to fuel consumption rather than investment. A process that was once virtuous can become self-destructive. The decreased investment in quality projects means productivity growth slows, even as the borrowing and spending makes incomes grow and labor more expensive. People feel rich and begin taking more leisure—after all, asset prices are high—even though their balance sheets are starting to deteriorate. At this point, debt burdens start to compound and incomes grow faster than productivity growth. In other words, the country tends to become over-indebted and uncompetitive. The country is becoming poor even though it is still behaving as though it is rich. Eventually the excess tends to lead to bubbles bursting, a period of slow decline and deleveraging. Suffice it to say that when looking at a country's potential to grow, it is critical to look at the country's productivity and indebtedness holistically, as part of its stage of development.

除了生产力和债务循环之外，还有一个心理动机的循环，发生在过去的繁荣程度上，以及经历了改善或恶化的经济状况。当一个国家贫穷和专注于生存的时候，生活维持生活方式的人不会浪费钱，因为它们重视价值，他们没有任何债务可以说是因为储蓄很短，没有人愿意借给他们。尽管该国的劳动力成本低，但竞争力不强，缺乏投资阻碍了未来生产率的提高。有些从这个阶段出现，其他的则不是，文化和地位是两个最大的决定因素。对于那些那样做的事情，要么是因为一个国家消除了像世界封闭的大障碍（像中国在1980年），或者只是因为一个更渐进的进化使他们的劳动变得有吸引力 - 一个良性循环就可以踢了。在这个阶段，投资不只是廉价;基础设施和其他有形资本的库存通常也很低，采用现有技术的空间很大，可以大大提高国家的潜力。利用（增加债务）可以回馈到更高的生产力和竞争优势，这在产生杠杆能力高的时候产生高回报，吸引更多的投资。关键在于这种资金和信贷必须用于产生足够的回报以偿还债务并为进一步增长提供资金的投资（使收入增长速度快于或高于债务）。然而随着国家变得越来越富有，越来越多的信贷倾向于燃料消耗而不是投资。曾经良性的过程可能会自毁。质量项目投资减少意味着生产率增长放缓，即使借款和支出使收入增长，劳动力更贵。尽管资产负债表开始恶化，人们感到富裕，开始休闲，毕竟资产价格高企。在这一点上，债务负担开始复合，收入增长快于生产率增长。换句话说，国家往往变得过度负债，没有竞争力。尽管它仍然表现得像富人一样，国家正在变得贫穷。最终，过剩倾向于导致泡沫破裂，一段缓慢下降和去杠杆化的时期。只要看待一个国家的发展潜力，那么在全面发展国家的生产力和债务是至关重要的。