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文/李兆元
新冠疫情蔓延引发全球市场震荡,未来世界经济将如何发展?网易研究局专访了哥伦比亚大学经济学教授、Global Thermostat公司的联合创始人兼现任首席执行官Graciela Chichilnisky。
以下为采访精编:
“全球经济至少要到2021年中期才能恢复正常”
网易研究局·大师:如何看待当前疫情所处的阶段以及新冠疫情对全球经济的影响?
Graciela Chichilnisky:当前的全球形势可能像大萧条一样具有破坏性,但性质是不同的,因为大萧条是经济因素和经济政策失灵造成的。而目前经济运转良好:我们只是在应对一个特殊的公共健康问题——新冠病毒的流行——这是经济外部的因素。全世界的疾病和死亡以及对社会隔离的需求显然是不同的。然而,可以观察到许多和大萧条相似的经济问题,比如严重的失业、生产和供应链的破坏,股市下跌和金融市场的混乱,随之而来的是大规模失业带来的损失和饥饿以及全社会经济活动的混乱。如果找到了疫苗或者治疗方法,经济将会恢复。这意味着问题和解决方案都在经济外部,何时能够解决具有不确定性,但总会在相对不久的将来恢复正常。
网易研究局·大师:您如何看待IMF对今年全球经济的预测?世界各国应如何应对经济衰退?
Graciela Chichilnisky:IMF的预测似乎是比较乐观的,目前的美股指数比2020年1月低约8个百分点,失业率在20%以上(在某些情况下为30%)。但是,如果通过医学上发现新冠病毒的救治措施或通过研发疫苗来缩短疫情的持续时间,那么IMF的预测结果可能是正确的。目前看来至少要到2021年中期才能恢复正常。
“石油需求和油价的下跌都将持续一段时间”
网易研究局·大师:您如何看待未来的油价趋势?“原油价格战”是否已经结束?
Graciela Chichilnisky:石油市场正在对三个截然不同但相互关联的因素作出反应:(1)对化石燃料和二氧化碳排放所造成的生存环境威胁的长期结构性反应,以及对《京都议定书》规定地区的碳排放量的反应。这减少了公司从化石燃料中获得的收益,并导致对石油公司的诉讼以及对石油行业的公共投资减少;(2)沙特阿拉伯和俄罗斯之间的近期的石油价格战,将毫无悬念地由沙特赢得,因为沙特有目前世界上最丰富的的石油储备和价格最低的提炼技术;(3)《京都议定书》碳市场清洁发展机制的技术成果,为发展中国家的清洁技术项目提供了数千亿美元的资金,并使这一技术大规模扩大,到2020年,太阳能的生产成本将首次低于化石燃料生产的电力。全球电力部门的总产值超过55万亿美元,在未来20年中,电力的使用正在成倍增长,特别是在发展中国家。所有这些因素都会导致全球的石油需求和使用量下降,以及石油价格相应下降。同时将会在国际石油市场中引起动荡。这两者可能都会持续一段时间。
网易研究局·大师:全球疫情仍在蔓延,中国应该如何应对进出口的压力?全球订单萎缩,外贸企业应该如何熬过这个寒冬?
Graciela Chichilnisky:没有什么简单的方法来解决这个问题,因为历史上一直存在着减少使用劳动力的长期趋势。这实际上对人类有益而非不利,但是我们需要新的经济机构来提供不与工作时间直接相关的收入,我们还没有在这方面取得足够的进展。
“新冠病毒流行可能预示更糟的事情将要发生”
网易研究局·大师:全球经济应该如何从新冠疫情的影响中恢复过来?应该采取哪些措施?
Graciela Chichilnisky:新冠病毒流行的严重影响应该使人们更好地了解公共卫生政策和公共服务的需求,例如健康保险、健康教育、医院、急诊医疗用品、食品供应政策以及国家对此类流行病的应对措施。以美国为例,美国的人口数量不足全球的4%,但目前全世界的新冠肺炎病例中约有30%都来自美国。事实上,新冠病毒的流行可能预示着更糟的事情将要发生:该病毒的原理是侵蚀人体中通过肺泡将二氧化碳转化为氧气的能力,因此它与气候问题完全相同,因为气候变暖也意味着全球缺乏通过碳循环将二氧化碳转化为氧气的能力。因此,一个重要的问题是,新冠病毒对社会造成的破坏是否会让人类理解全球性的灾难是如何发生的,以及我们是否需要立即采取行动来应对气候变化,以避免人类遭受到破坏性的威胁。
网易研究局·大师:风险之年你对投资者有什么建议吗?
Graciela Chichilnisky:请记住,一旦我们研发出疫苗或者能治愈该疾病的药物,情况就会逆转。这既不是周期性的市场低迷,也不是类似2008年的金融市场和政策失灵。但我们应该为接下来可能发生的灾难做好准备。如前所述,从气候变化的角度来说,全球变暖和新冠病毒的机理是一样的,因为它会干扰地球的呼吸系统,使之失去将二氧化碳转化为氧气的能力。全球变暖进程已经开始,投资者应该对此作出反应,利用资本的力量继续改变石油和商品市场,投资致力于改善气候变化的公司,去除大气层中的二氧化碳,并将其转化成有用的产品,例如淡化的食品和饮料、水合成燃料,可再生聚合物,生物肥料,碳纤维建筑材料等等,所有这些都可以通过新型低成本技术直接从空气中去除二氧化碳来完成。黑石集团的创始人拉里·芬克(Larry Fink)最近也提出了类似的告诫,全球投资者开始领导并遵循这种模式,其目标是未来能够形成可持续发展的经济和金融格局。
ENGLISH VERSION:
By NetEase Economic Research Bureau (NERB), professional international economic think tank in China.
Interview with Graciela Chichilnisky, professor of economics at Columbia University, the co-founder and current CEO of the company Global Thermostat.
EDITOR: Zhaoyuan Li
NERB: How do you evaluate the influence of coronavirus on world economy?
Graciela Chichilnisky: The current global situation can be as destructive as the Great Depression, but this is different since that depresión was caused by economic factors and failure of economic policy. The economy is working fine here: we are living a response to extraordinary health issues - a pandemic - that are external to the economy. The sickness and death around the world and the need for social distancing are obviously different. Nevertheless many of the same economic problems can be observed mostly severe unemployment and disruption of production and supply chains, stock exchange drops and financial disruption, inevitably followed by losses and hunger from unemployment and economic dislocation and by disorganization of most economic activity. It is however expected that if a vaccine or cure is found the economy will recover. This means both the problem and the solution are external to the economy, and the solution has an uncertain but approximate time limit in the relatively near future.
NERB: The IMF forecasted that the global GDP growth rate will become -3% this year. How do you think about this forecast? How should major economies respond to economic recession?
Graciela Chichilnisky: The IMF forecast seems optimistic, as currently the stock exchange is about 8% lower than it was in January 2020, and there is above 20% unemployment in some cases 30%. However if the duration of the pandemic is shortened by medical findings of remedies for the COV 19 disease or by finding a vaccine, at the end the IMF may be right. At present there seems to be no return to normal until at least mid 2021.
NERB: How do you view the global demand for crude oil in the future?
Graciela Chichilnisky: The oil market is responding to three quite different but related factors: (1) a long-run structural response to the existential environmental threats caused by burning fossil fuels and emitting CO2, with the corresponding response in terms of the creation of the Kyoto Protocol carbon market (EUETS) and its relatives, which now govern about 25% of the world, 50 nations in the EU China California and Eastern US states. This decreased the gains from burning oil and led to law suits against oil companies as well as public desinvestment in the oil sector, (2) the recent short term price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia which inevitably will be won by the Saudi who have by far the largest oil deposits in the world and the least expensive oil to extract (3) the technological results from the Kyoto Protocol’s carbon market Clean Development Mechanism that provided hundreds of US$billions for clean technology projects in developing nations and facilitated huge scaling- up of photovolteic solar energy in China, with the result that in 2020 for the first time solar electricity is less costly to produce than electricity produced from fossil fuels. The global power sector exceeds US$55trillion and the use of electricity is in the process of doubling up in the next twenty years particularly in developing world, so the latter impact (3) is likely to be very important.
All these factors contribute to a drop in the demand and in the use of oil globally, and a corresponding drop in the price of oil. At the same time they cause turbulence in the international oil market. Both are likely to stay with us for a while.
NERB: Global manufacturing industries have been shrinking, how should we protect manufacturing companies in the world?
Graciela Chichilnisky: There is no simple way to resolve this problem since there is a historical secular movement towards decreasing use of labor - which is less needed - for production. This is in fact good for human beings rather than bad, but we need new economic institutions to provide income that is not immediately related to hours worked. We have not made sufficient progress on this.
There is already a trend against globalization and t is likely to continue. This need not create a food crisis but the current lack of political leadership and intelligent economic policies indeed have that effect.
NERB: How do you think of the world economy after the coronavirus? How long do you think it will last? What measures should we take to recover from the damage on global economy?
Graciela Chichilnisky: The horrific impacts of the Covid 19 pandemic should create better understanding of the need for public health policies and more generally for public services such as health insurance, health education, hospitals, emergency medical supplies, food supply policies and pandemic responses in nations such as the US which have fewer than 4% of the world population yet suffer at present about 30% of the COVID 19 cases worldwide. This may have the desired transformational effect - it will be seen for example in the coming US elections. Indeed COVID 19 could be a warning of much worse things to come: the virus acts by depriving the human body of the ability of transforming CO2 into oxygen through the alveoli in the lungs, and as such it is exactly the same as the problem of climate change which is a failure of the global transformation of CO2 into oxygen through the carbon cycle. The important question now is whether the social damage produced by COVID 19 will lead humans to understand the reality of global catastrophes and whether we will will take action on climate change as needed immediately to prevent the existential threat of destruction of the human species.
NERB: Do you have any suggestions for investors in the year of risk?
Graciela Chichilnisky: Keep in mind that the situation will reverse itself - even if slowly - once a vaccine or a medication is found. This is not just a cyclical market dip nor a malfunctioning of financial markets and policies as in 2008. A catastrophe plan should be however prepared for what comes next. As mentioned above climate change is a global version of COVID 19 in the sense that it interferes with the respiratory system of planet Earth - the exchange of CO2 for oxygen globally - as the virus interferes with the lungs that perform the human exchange of CO2 for oxygen. Climate change has already started. Investors should respond by trying to use their monetary power to continue transforming oil and commodity markets and invest in projects and firms that remove CO2 from the atmosphere transforming the CO2 thus obtained into useful products that stabilize the removed CO2 on earth, like food and beverages desalinated water synthetic fuels renewable polymers biofertilizers carbon fibers building materials, all of which can be done with new low cost technologies to remove CO2 directly from air. Blackrock’s founder Larry Fink made a similar admonition recently and investors the world over are starting to lead and to follow this model, with the goal of transforming the economic and financial landscape as needed for a sustainable future.
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