Investing

Countries that save and invest in their future tend to grow faster by creating capital equipment and infrastructure that helps improve the productivity of their workforce relative to other countries with more limited investment rates. Further, high rates of savings provide the capital needed to invest in the most innovative companies. Of course, there are always risks that this investment is unproductive. Typically the investments that yield the most productivity gains occur in emerging countries that are just becoming rich. 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.

通过创建资本设备和基础设施，有助于提高劳动力相对于其他国家投资率有限的国家的生产力，这些为未来而节省和投资的国家往往会加快发展。此外，高储蓄率为投资最具创新力的公司提供了所需资金。当然，这种投资往往是无效的风险。通常，产生最大生产力收益的投资发生在刚刚变得富裕的新兴国家。在这个阶段，投资不仅仅是廉价的;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。

Investing is measured by looking at 1) the rate of total non-residential fixed investment in a given economy and 2) the household savings rate. Looking at investing on its own has historically had a 20% correlation with future growth, but when combined with cost it has had a 59% correlation with future growth.

投资是通过观察1）非特定经济体非住宅固定资产投资总额的比例来衡量的，2）家庭储蓄率。与投资自身相比，历史上与未来增长率有20％的相关性，但与成本相结合，与未来增长率有59％的相关性。

The rate of Chinese investment and savings is the highest in the world, though increasingly inefficient. The development of modern infrastructure and increasing business investment has been an important contributor to the productivity growth of the Chinese workforce over the last few decades—though an increasing share of this investment is going to less productive uses. The UK, Japan and the US are on the lower end of investing rates for the developed world. Brazil, Hungary and Russia have some of the lowest investment rates in the emerging world (with investment in Brazil and Hungary particularly depressed and much of the investment in Russia oriented toward resources and related infrastructure). When you consider how inexpensive it is to make investments in many emerging countries, how limited their existing stock of capital is, and how early they are in adopting existing technologies, not to mention building their own, India and China really stand out. On the flipside, we become more concerned about the US and Japan maintaining their technology advantage when we consider their expense and their lower levels of investment. (The innovativeness of countries is a question we return to in culture, and on that dimension both countries look more promising.)

中国的投资和储蓄率是世界上最高的，虽然效率越来越高。现代基础设施的发展和商业投资的增长一直是过去几十年来中国劳动力生产力增长的重要因素，尽管这一投资的份额越来越多，生产用途较少。英国，日本和美国在发达国家的投资率较低。巴西，匈牙利和俄罗斯在新兴市场的投资率最低（巴西，匈牙利的投资尤其沮丧，俄罗斯对资源和相关基础设施的投资大部分）。当你考虑在许多新兴国家投资多么便宜的时候，他们现有的资本存量有多么局限，以及采用现有技术的时间，更不用说建立自己的，印度和中国真的脱颖而出。另一方面，当我们考虑到他们的费用和较低的投资水平时，我们更关心美国和日本的技术优势。（国家的创新是我们回归文化的一个问题，在这个方面，这两个国家看起来都更有希望。）