读书笔记

Thanks to my bro for giving me this book. I have quickly browsed through it and my feelings are as follows. The core of this book is to sort out the key economic activities, policy choices, and economic cycles of the world’s major economies in their historical development.

To fully understand it, there are two prerequisites: one needs to master basic macroeconomic concepts, such as the meaning of the US dollar index, CPI, PPI, the impact of interest rate changes on economic indicators, and the difference between non farm payroll index, inflation, and stagflation. To understand the development trends and important economic policies of major economies in recent decades, the focus of the book is on how different economies make policy choices and what results these choices ultimately bring.

Compared with other classic economics books, I personally think it has two obvious shortcomings: its content coverage is relatively one-sided and it has not formed a more complete analytical framework. Part of the inference process seems far fetched, such as attributing the prosperity and decline of the Japanese economy solely to Japanese conglomerates or chaebols, while ignoring other complex variables.

We often say ’take history as a mirror’, but which economic development stage in the book is closer to our current situation? Which economic cycle is it currently in? In addition, I am also thinking that if the changes in the economic cycle really follow the law (such as the Merrill Lynch clock model), then individuals or entities should have different coping strategies at different economic stages. Perhaps we should not only focus on the high point of GDP book figures, but also invest the profits from the economic prosperity period into reproduction and use them to improve production efficiency, which is more conducive to long-term development.

我快速浏览了一遍，我的感受如下。

这本书的核心是梳理世界主要经济体在历史发展中的关键经济活动、政策选择和经济周期。

要充分理解它，需满足两个前提条件：首先，需要掌握基本的宏观经济概念，例如美元指数、消费者价格指数（CPI）、生产者价格指数（PPI）的含义，利率变动对经济指标的影响，以及非农就业指数、通货膨胀和滞胀之间的区别。其次，要了解近几十年来主要经济体的发展趋势和重要经济政策，本书的重点在于探讨不同经济体如何做出政策选择，以及这些选择最终会带来何种结果。

与其他经典经济学著作相比，我个人认为它有两个明显的缺点：内容覆盖面相对片面（没有写全球最大的2个经济体的经济运行规律），且尚未形成一个更为完整的分析框架。部分推理过程似乎牵强附会，例如将日本经济的繁荣与衰退完全归咎于日本财阀或韩国财阀，而忽略了其他复杂的变量。

我们常说“以史为鉴”，但书中哪个经济发展阶段与我们当前的情况更为接近呢？我们目前处于哪个经济周期？此外，我也在想，如果经济周期的变化确实遵循某种规律（如美林时钟模型），那么个人或实体在不同经济阶段应该有不同的应对策略。或许我们不仅应关注GDP账面数字的高点，还应将经济繁荣时期的利润投入到再生产中，用于提高生产效率，这样更有利于长期发展。

作者：小Lin（Lindsay），本科毕业于北京大学经济学院金融系，又在哥伦比亚大学主修金融数学，取得硕士学位，曾就职于纽约摩根大通投行。知名财经科普UP主。2022年B站百大UP主；2022年抖音年度高光时刻作者；2021年度知乎新知答主。今日头条、腾讯科技、36Kr、领英等10余个平台优质内容创作者。