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What can be done to cut inflation? That is a question haunting central bankers right now, given the “disappointing” trajectory of consumer price data in America, among other places.
如何削減通膨？這是目前困擾中央銀行家的一個問題，特別是考慮到美國等地消費者價格數據的「令人失望」的走勢。
It is also worrying politicians such as US President Joe Biden, against a backdrop of a high level of voter discontent about the economy. Investors are uneasy too. This week the gold price hit record highs, amid a search for inflation hedges.
在選民對經濟高度不滿的背景下，美國總統喬•拜登(Joe Biden)等政界人士也感到擔憂。投資者也感到不安。本週，由於人們正在尋找對沖通膨的方式，黃金價格創下了歷史新高。
This is, in turn, prompting some classic policy responses: on the one hand, the Federal Reserve is pledging to keep rates high to curb demand; on the other, Biden is lashing out against big business for alleged “price gouging” and/or deceptive practices such as “shrinkflation”, or selling fewer goods for the same price.
這反過來引發了一些典型的政策反應：一方面，美聯準承諾維持高利率以抑制需求；另一方面，拜登猛烈抨擊大企業涉嫌的「哄擡價格」和/或「縮減產品量」等欺詐行爲，即以同樣的價格銷售更少的商品。
Cue a recent bizarre spat about the size of a Snickers bar. Biden suggested in his State of the Union speech that these have shrunk; Mars, the maker of Snickers, denies that.
最近關於士力架(Snickers)巧克力棒大小的爭議引起了人們的關注。拜登在他的國情諮文演講中暗示這些巧克力棒已經縮小了；然而，士力架的製造商瑪氏(Mars)否認了這一說法。
This war of words makes for colourful debate. But as the Fed’s headache deepens, there is a far better way to frame the issue — by invoking what economists call “shrouding”. The term refers to the way prices are presented to, and concealed from, consumers, and has been widely studied by behavioural economists.
這場言詞之戰爲辯論增添了色彩。然而，隨著美聯準頭痛問題的加劇，有一個更佳的方式來闡述這一議題——那就是借用經濟學家所述的「遮蔽」(shrouding)概念。這一術語指的是價格如何被展示給消費者，以及如何對消費者保持隱祕，行爲經濟學家已對此進行了廣泛研究。
Back in the 1980s, for example, the late Daniel Kahneman worked with Amos Tversky to explore “price partitioning”, or how companies sometimes price products in multiple steps, making it hard for consumers to evaluate costs in a “rational” manner.
例如，早在20世紀80年代，已故的丹尼爾•卡尼曼(Daniel Kahneman)與阿莫斯•特沃斯基(Amos Tversky)合作研究了「價格分割」，這是指公司有時會將產品定價分爲多個步驟，使得消費者難以以「理性」的方式評估成本。
Hotel rooms are one example from the service sector: a low initial charge might carry subsequent high additional fees. Printers are another: a cheap printing device might require expensive ink cartridges, the cost of which are not readily visible upfront. Shipping costs are yet another example.
酒店客房就是服務業的一個例子：初期的費用可能較低，但可能會帶來高額的附加費用。印表機也是如此：一臺便宜的印表機可能需要昂貴的墨盒，而這些墨盒的成本在購買時並不明顯。運輸成本同樣是一個例子。
A cynic might shrug at this, and argue that it is just sensible behaviour on the part of profit-seeking companies. Maybe so. Consultants such as Deloitte have offered advice to their clients in recent years about how far companies can use shrouding to raise margins, without sparking a consumer backlash. But the mere fact that shrouding still exists in 2024, four decades after Kahneman and others began studying it, underscores three important points.
憤世嫉俗的人可能會對此不屑一顧，認爲這只是追求利潤的公司的理智行爲。也許確實如此。近年來，像德勤這樣的諮詢公司向其客戶提供了一些建議，探討了公司在不引發消費者反彈的情況下，可以在多大程度上利用遮蔽來提高利潤率。然而，即使在卡尼曼等人開始研究這種現象四十年後的2024年，遮蔽仍然存在，這一事實本身就凸顯了三個重要的觀點。
First, business competition does not always deliver true efficiency; markets can fail. Second, this market failure arises because consumers are not the all-knowing rational agents that they appear in economic models. They have cognitive biases that lead them to make poor choices and leave them ill-equipped to make judgments about inflation.
首先，商業競爭並不總能帶來真正的效率；市場可能會失靈。其次，這種市場失靈的出現，是因爲消費者並不像經濟模型中表現的那樣，是無所不知的理性行爲者。他們的認知偏見導致他們做出不良的選擇，使他們無法對通膨做出準確判斷。
And third, digitisation alone does not magically fix these competition problems. Yes, it can create more price transparency in some arenas, such as airline tickets. But the internet sometimes creates so much information overload that it can also lead to shrouding, particularly when consumers are busy or poorly educated. Indeed, the image — or illusion — of online transparency can actually make obfuscation worse.
第三，單靠數位化並不能神奇地解決所有競爭問題。確實，它在一些領域，如航空票務中，能夠提升價格透明度。然而，網路有時候會帶來過多的資訊，導致資訊過載，這在消費者很忙或教育程度不高時尤其容易引發遮蔽。實際上，網路透明度所營造的形象，或者更準確地說，錯覺，可能反而會加劇資訊的混淆。
Measuring the cost of this is hard, of course. But last month the London-based Behavioural Insights Team had a stab at it, and concluded that British gross domestic product would be 0.2 to 1 per cent (or £5-£23bn) bigger if shrouding did not exist.
當然，衡量這方面的成本是有難度的。但上個月，倫敦的行爲洞察團隊(Behavioural Insights Team)進行了研究嘗試，並得出結論：如果沒有遮蔽現象，英國的國內生產總值(GDP)將增加0.2%至1%（即50億至230億英鎊）。
It arrived at that estimate by assuming that true price transparency would enable consumers to buy products and services from more efficient companies, thus raising productivity. However, it also explored another crucial issue: that one of the biggest victims of shrouding is the government, since officials running public procurement programmes also struggle to judge the true cost of the services they acquire.
當然，精確衡量這方面的成本頗有難度。透過假設真正的價格透明能讓消費者向更高效的公司購買產品和服務，從而提升生產率，它得出了這個估計。然而，研究還探討了另一個關鍵性問題：政府是遮蔽現象最大的受害者之一，特別是負責公共採購計劃的官員也難以準確判斷他們獲取的服務的真實成本。
It follows that efficiency and efficacy would rise for the public and private sectors alike if there were anti-shrouding policies. These could include measures to impose standardised labelling for products and support price comparison websites, consumer advisory services and so on.
因此，如果存在反對資訊隱藏的政策，無論是公共還是民營部門的效率和效果都將提升。這些政策可能包括實施產品標準化標籤，支援價格比較網站，消費者諮詢服務等措施。
Some free-market economists will undoubtedly wince at this and see it as unwarranted meddling, although BIT says such measures would simply “improv[e] how markets work, unleash innovation and creativity, and help people to make better choices for themselves”.
一些自由市場經濟學家無疑會對此感到不安，視之爲無理的干預，然而BIT卻表示這些措施只是「優化市場運作，激發創新和創造力，幫助人們爲自己做出更好的選擇」。
Either way, American policymakers and pundits should heed this kind of research. After all, Biden is not the only politician wailing about inflation and alleged price gouging. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has expressed similar sentiments in the past.
無論如何，美國的政策制定者和評論家都應該關注這類研究。畢竟，拜登並不是唯一一個對通膨和所謂的價格操縱感到憂慮的政治家。共和黨總統候選人唐納•川普(Donald Trump)在過去也表達過類似的觀點。
That is unsurprising, given that bashing big business is often a vote-winner. However, it would be preferable for policymakers to find practical ways to support better price transparency, rather than terrorising the C-suite. The latter hurts confidence, while the former might actually improve competition and market functioning in ways that reduce prices.
這並不令人驚訝，因爲抨擊大企業往往能贏得選票。然而，政策制定者更應該尋找實際的方法來支援更好的價格透明度，而不是恐嚇高級管理層。後者會削弱信心，而前者實際上可能會改善競爭和市場運作，從而降低價格。
To put it another way: if Washington wants to make sense of price trends, it needs to take a leaf out of Kahneman’s book and recognise that the perversity of human behaviour endures even in a digital world. That might not be enough to end those Snickers wars. But it would at least lead to a vision of economics more in tune with how companies, consumers and voters actually behave.
換句話說，如果華盛頓想要理解價格趨勢，就需要從卡尼曼的書中吸取教訓，認識到即使在數位化的世界中，人類行爲的反常性依然存在。這可能無法結束士力架的爭議，但至少能引導出一種更符合企業、消費者和選民實際行爲的經濟視角。