The refugee crisis — match us if you can
如何解决难民安置问题？
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Writing in the 1930s, Lionel Robbins, head of LSE’s economics department, defined economics as “the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses”. It’s the study of who gets what and why.
上世纪30年代，伦敦政治经济学院(LSE)经济学系主管莱昂内尔•罗宾斯(Lionel Robbins)曾将经济学定义为“将人类行为当做这样一种东西来研究的科学，即不同目的与用途不固定且稀缺的不同手段之间的关系”。经济学是有关“谁得到了什么以及为什么”的研究。
That typically means that economists study conventional markets: how prices work, how people respond to them and how the whole system might function or malfunction. But sometimes a market simply will not do. We don’t allocate children to state school places based on their parents’ willingness to pay. Most countries don’t sell passports to the highest bidder. We do not have a legal market in iced kidneys.
这往往意味着经济学家研究各种常规的市场：价格是如何运作的，人们如何对价格作出回应，整个体系如何可能发挥作用或失灵。但有时候，市场根本无法解决问题。我们不会根据家长们出钱的意愿，来决定公立学校名额的分配。大多数国家不会把护照“卖”给出价最高的人。买卖人体肾脏的合法市场也是不存在的。
Whether we like it or not, the problem of who gets what and why remains. Sometimes it is grubbily resolved by the emergence of parallel markets — for example, children can be placed in desirable schools at taxpayer expense if their parents buy or rent expensive homes in the right areas.
无论我们喜欢与否，“谁得到什么以及为什么”的问题依然存在。有的时候，这个问题通过平行市场的出现，以不那么光明正大的方式得到解决——比如，如果家长在房价高昂的好学区买房或者租房，他们的孩子就可以进入理想的公立学校上学。
Over the past few decades a small group of economists — most notably Nobel laureate Alvin Roth, author of Who Gets What — and Why (2015) — has been designing “matching mechanisms” to address allocation problems without resorting to traditional markets. A typical problem: matching teaching hospitals with trainee doctors. The doctors want good hospitals and the hospitals want good doctors. Each side will also have a focus on a particular field of medicine, and the doctors may have preferences over location. Some doctors may be dating fellow medics, who are themselves searching for a teaching hospital.
过去几十年，少数经济学家——其中最著名的是著有《谁得到了什么，为什么》(Who Gets What — and Why, 2015)的诺贝尔奖得主阿尔文•罗思(Alvin Roth)——一直在设计“匹配机制”，寻求不借助传统的市场解决分配问题。一个典型的问题是：如何匹配教学医院和见习医生。医生想去好的医院，医院想要好的医生。双方可能都有各自专注的医学领域，医生还可能会对地点有偏好。一些医生可能在约会别的医生，他们约会的医生可能也在寻找教学医院。
A good matching mechanism tries to satisfy as many of these preferences as possible. And it ends the need for people to second-guess the system. Bad matching mechanisms reward people who say that a compromise option is really their top preference. Such mind-games are alienating and unfair; in a well-designed matching system, they can be eliminated.
一个好的匹配机制设法尽可能多地满足这些偏好，让人们无需再提前猜测系统的可能结果、并基于这种猜测改变自己的选择。在糟糕的匹配机制下，那些把自己的次优选说成是最优选的人会占便宜。这样的心理游戏让人们心生间隙，也是不公平的；在设计良好的匹配系统下，这些问题将不复存在。广州英语翻译公司、英语翻译机构
Roth and a growing number of his students and colleagues have designed matching mechanisms for schools and hospital placements, and even mechanisms to ensure the best match for donated kidneys. In each case a market is socially unacceptable but ad hoc or lottery-based allocations are also poor solutions. Nobody wants a random kidney, or to be assigned a place on the whim of a well-meaning bureaucrat who doesn’t really understand the situation.
罗思和他越来越多的学生和同事为学校入学名额和医院实习名额设计了匹配机制，甚至还设计了确保捐献的肾脏得到最佳匹配的机制。在这几种情况中，市场都是不被社会接受的，但临时安排或者抽签分配也是糟糕的解决方案。没人乐意随机分到一个肾脏，也没人乐意让一个虽然怀着好心、但并不真正了解情况的官僚一拍脑袋分配给自己一个名额。
By balancing competing demands, good matching mechanisms have alleviated real suffering in school systems and organ donation programmes. Now two young Oxford academics, Will Jones of the Refugee Studies Centre and Alexander Teytelboym of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, are trying to persuade governments to use matching mechanisms in the refugee crisis.
通过平衡这些相互竞争的需求，好的匹配机制切实缓解了学校分配体系和器官捐献项目中的困扰。现在，两名年轻的牛津(Oxford)学者正试图说服政府在难民危机中运用匹配机制。这两人分别是：难民研究中心(Refugee Studies Centre)的威尔•琼斯(Will Jones)和新经济思维研究院(Institute for New Economic Thinking)的亚历山大•泰特尔尔博伊姆(Alexander Teytelboym)。
Most popular discussions of the crisis focus on how many refugees we in rich countries should accept. Yet other questions matter too. Once nations, or groups of countries, have decided to resettle a certain number of refugees from temporary camps, to which country should they go? or within a country, to which area?
在这场危机中，大多数热门讨论聚焦于我们富国应该接收多少难民。然而其他问题也很重要。如果一些国家，或者一组国家，决定接收和安置临时难民营中一定数量的难民，那么这些难民到底应该去哪个国家？或者说，去某个国家的哪个地方？
Different answers have been tried over the years, from randomly dispersing refugees to using the best guesses of officials, as they juggle the preferences of local communities with what they imagine the refugees might want.
多年来，人们试过了种种解决方案，比如随机分配，再比如让负责的官员综合考虑各地方社区的偏好以及他们设想中难民自己的意愿，然后凭猜测做出他们认为可能最好的安排。
In fact, this is a classic matching problem. Different areas have different capabilities. Some have housing but few school places; others have school places but few jobs; still others have an established community of refugees from a particular region. And refugee families have their own skills, needs and desires.
事实上，这是一个经典的匹配问题。不同地方的容纳能力不同。有些地方住房充足，但学校入学名额不多；有些地方的学校入学名额充足，但工作机会很少；还有些地方已经有来自某一特定原籍的难民建立了强大的社区。难民家庭本身也有不同的技能、需求和意愿。
This is not so different a problem from allocating trainee doctors to teaching hospitals, or children to schools, or even kidneys to compatible recipients. In each case, we can get a better match through a matching mechanism. However many refugees we decide to resettle, there’s no excuse for doing the process wastefully.
这个问题与把见习医生分配到不同教学医院，把孩子分配到不同学校，乃至把肾脏分配给相容的接受者并没有太大不同。在每一种情况中，我们都可以通过匹配机制得到更好的匹配结果。不管我们决定接收安置多少难民，我们都没有借口在这个过程中造成资源浪费。
There is no perfect mechanism for matching refugees to communities — there are too many variables at play — but there are some clear parameters: housing is a major constraint, as is the availability of medical care. Simple systems exist, or could be developed, that should make the process more efficient, stable and dignified.
没有一个完美的机制可以将难民和社区匹配起来，因为这里涉及的变量太多了，但有一些清楚的参数：住房是一个主要的限制条件，医疗服务的充足程度也是一个。简单的系统是存在的，或者说我们可以开发出这样的系统，让这个过程更有效率、更稳定、更文明。广州英语翻译公司、英语翻译机构。
One possibility is a mechanism called “top trading cycles”. This method invites each refugee family to point to their preferred local authority, while each local authority has its own waiting list based on refugee vulnerability. The trading cycles mechanism then looks for opportunities to allocate each family to their preferred location. The simplest case is that, for example, the family at the top of the Hackney waiting list wants to go to Hackney. But if the family at the top of Hackney’s list wants to go to Camden, the family at the top of Camden’s list wants to go to Edinburgh, and the family at the top of Edinburgh’s list wants to go to Hackney, all three families will get their wish.
一个可能的解决方案是被称为“首位交换循环”的机制。这个方法邀请每个难民家庭标出他们想去的地方，同时每个地方当局根据难民需要帮助的程度排出一份等待接收名单。然后这个交换循环机制就会查看有没有机会将每个家庭分配到他们想去的地方。比如，最简单的例子是，处于伦敦哈克尼区(Hackney)等待接收名单首位的家庭正好也想去哈克尼区。但如果处于哈克尼区等待接收名单首位的家庭想去伦敦坎姆登区(Camden)，而处于坎姆登区等待接收名单首位的家庭想去爱丁堡，处于爱丁堡等待接收名单首位的家庭又想去伦敦哈克尼区，那么这三个家庭都能得偿所愿。
Right now, the UK is a promising candidate to pioneer the use of one of these matching mechanisms to place refugees. The government has pledged to resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees now in temporary camps. Local authorities have volunteered to play their part. But to make the best possible matches between the needs of the refugees and the capabilities of these local authorities, it’s time to deploy a little economics.
现在，英国有望率先运用以上匹配机制中的一种来安置难民。英国政府已承诺要从临时难民营中接收安置2万名叙利亚难民。各地方当局已主动表示愿意出一份力。但要实现难民需求与这些地方当局容纳能力的最佳匹配，就要用上一点经济学了。
Tim Harford is the author of ‘The Undercover Economist Strikes Back’.
本文作者著有《卧底经济学家反击战》(The Undercover Economist Strikes Back)
广州英语翻译公司 英语翻译机构
