AJS新文| 为什么经济学诞生于英国17世纪？从特许公司的组织解释

荐读：

Erikson, Emily and Mark Hamilton. 2018. “Companies and the Rise of Economic Thought: The Institutional Foundations of Early Economics in England, 1550–1720.” American Journal of Sociology 124(1):111–49.

可能最重要的是处理复杂难办的历史数据，用时间序列分析的向量自回归，但 我看不懂~

研究问题：

Why 17th-century England proved to be such an exceptionally fruitful site in the development of economic thought has been a long-standing and unresolved question.

研究结论

公司法人作为制度组织也作为公共议题，使得政治参与弱、经济实力兴起的商人形成了公共领域，刺激了经济学思想作品的出版。

We offer a novel answer by arguing that the wave of incorporation that took place in 17th-century England was a significant factor driving the sudden increase in innovative economic works. Incorporation had this effect because of an institutional context in which merchants constituted a minority voice in government. Several elements intersected as chartered companies began to take a larger and larger share of the commercial landscape. Companies provided an internal discursive space that fostered debate and argumentation

Merchants excluded from the discursive space of the companies or attempting to influence government commercial policies needed a space that bridged different merchant associations, the state, and other elite actors. This bridging space was the public sphere

low rates of merchant representation in parliament over the greater part of the 17th century restricted internal avenues for the expression of their influence

因此，作者想研究的是：特许公司影响经济思想生产the mechanisms through which chartered companies influenced the publication of economic thought.

一、17th-Century的英国经济思想奇迹

17世纪前的经济思想都是道德哲学

Prior to the 17th century, written work touching on economic matters was conducted largely within the frameworks of moral philosophy and scholastic theology.

The first coherent defenses of free trade were articulated by 17th-century English authors

17世纪之前的中世纪，经济学关注的议题如贫穷与财富，是与宗教说教有关，如与亚里士多德有关。比如在三个方面：

1. 高利货：Religious tracts on this and other topics make up nearly 20% of the texts in the latter half of the 16th century

2. 财富

3. 亚里士多德的家计观：The span 1550–1600 provides an extremely manageable set of 83 documents. The influence of Aristotle was everywhere in the medieval period. One of the ways in which this played itself out in these works was through the prevalence of oeconomicus, a term referring to the problems of creating and managing the private wealth of the household. Nearly 30% of the texts from this era are treatises on the art of husbandry, which provide practical advice for individuals managing both small and large agricultural households.

但是到了17世纪，之前没出现的特许公司问题，占了经济类出版物的20%

Works about specific chartered companies and their trade, which were not the main topic of any of the works in the 16th century, make up nearly 20% of publications. The Royal African Company, the East India Company, and the South Seas Company are most heavily represented. 

并且，到17世纪，大学学者开始关注商人领域议题，激发出大量思想家。

In the 16th century, the moral causes and consequences of economic behavior were in the domain of philosophy, but matters of trade and commerce were thought of as the domain of merchants and below the consideration of university scholars (Letwin 2013). By the 1690s the contributions of merchant authors such as Thomas Mun, Gerard de Malynes, Edward Misselden, William Petty, and John Cary were being taken seriously by the classically trained Locke, who brought a new level of rigor to the ongoing dialogue.

二、两种解释：经济与国家

1. 经济复杂了，经济思想也复杂了：如海外贸易发展

2. 民族国家兴起及国际竞争刺激了经济思想发展，如Erik Reinert, Sophus Reinert, and Pernille Røge 毕竟，17世纪正处于重商主义时代

三、理解特许公司：组织的公共领域的视角

1. 国家授权，全国垄断

2. 来源复杂，如former guilds, regulated companies, and joint-stock companies

3. 从属商人都被排除在授权的政策过程之外

Merchant representation in parliament in 1580—prior to the sudden upsurge in economic texts—stood at 15.6% and decreased for roughly the next half century. Similar levels of representation were not achieved until the mid-18th century. 

4. 这种公司在私人领域和公共领域之间，有模糊性

——结果：国家政治整合不够，自己就闯出公共领域话语

The low integration of merchants into the state in England gave them a strong incentive to make public appeals in order to build support and constituencies for the commercial policies they favored. 

四、以东印度公司为例

如，1620年代，东印度公司就反映了，国家认为它的垄断导致了贸易萧条、重金属外流，于是激起了维护一方的经济刊物小册子，尤其是著名的Thomas Mun，提出了贸易平衡理论，成为亚当斯密等人引用的观点。

到了1660年代，棉花业因从印度的进口冲击，导致公众辩论又把东印度公司放到焦点，甚至产生强大的游说团体想禁止棉花进口，于是东印度公司就出版了一系列经济学作品，认为长远的进出口比现在的损失更有益。在这里辩论中， Cary’s work on the East India Company was reprinted in 1719 and 1745 and translated into French and Italian ，辩论中有的观点也酝酿了后来“比较优势”的政治经济学理论。

这部分证据的结论是：围绕废除或不废除特许公司，是17世纪经济学思想的发展轨迹。In each case, crucial developments for the trajectory of modern economics were the result of the efforts of merchants for and against chartered companies to sway state policy on overseas trade.

五、时间序列分析（1550-1720年）

models the relationships between publication rates of economic texts, the number of chartered companies, and changing rates of merchant representation. 

首先，1550年至1720年英国经济文本的出版，转折点是在1640年左右，

其次，成立于1550年至1720年的特许公司,

最后是1584年至1720年英国议会下议院的商人数量

通过用向量自回归模型，得出：There are three significant variables for the publication of economic texts. The largest positive and significant coefficient is Companies. All Texts has a smaller estimated effect, and the lower band of the confidence interval lies extremely close to zero. The only significant negative coefficient is the count of merchants represented in parliament, Merchants Parliament.

进一步，作者还比较了，这些特许公司的数量变化，和哲学文本出版没关系的~。 

六、传记资料分析

通过对723名当时的经济思想文章作者的分析， merchant authors contributed a significant proportion of texts, second only to professionals。不过，由于大量文章是匿名撰写（尤其是贸易有关），所以作者也估计 there is reason to believe that merchants are undercounted among named authors, that they are more likely to publish anonymously, and that their contributions increased in the period of interest at a rate higher than can be positively documented through the historical record.

七、理论对话

第一，与哈贝马斯的公共领域理论对话。哈贝马斯忽视了组织（特许公司）的作用

Habermas explains the rise of the public sphere through two phenomena and their relationship to each other: the privatization of the economic functions of the household and the increasing power of the state. Our results suggest that Habermas neglected a critical component of this process: the rise of privately held companies.

如果说哈贝马斯探讨的是 the privatization of economic life, 那么这篇文章想说明的是 the corporatization of economic life.

第二，充实“文化洞”（cultural hole）概念。特许公司作为一个新的话语，其存废、进出口的利弊，使得不同群体之间得以沟通。Structural theories of cultural production suggest that gaps between groups, disjunctures, and lack of connectivity between different populations can lead to new modes of discourse and communication as the distinct groups attempt to negotiate a common cultural ground that allows for communication and coordination between the groups ... a cultural hole existed among the three involved parties: independent merchants, company merchants, and most importantly the state. The new discourse of 17th-century economics was a cultural construction intended to bridge that gap.

（Sociological理论大缸第277期）

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