Sixty years of division of the Korean peninsula has created two states with very different standards of living in one country. The Korean example is pathological. The division of Germany resulted in two states, both functional in economic terms, but one far richer. The less noticed comparison between the modern economic histories of Finland and Estonia had the same outcome.
朝鲜半岛长达60年的分裂产生了两个政权，在一个国家之内，生活水平截然不同。朝鲜的例子有些反常。德国当年的分裂也产生了两个政权，但经济上都运转良好，只是其中一个要富裕得多。不那么引人注意的芬兰和爱沙尼亚在现代经济史上的对比，结果也是一样。
There are few controlled experiments in economics, but these are as close as we get, and the results were clear. They were also unexpected. Hard though it is to believe today, in the 1960s many serious commentators on left and right believed that Russian economic progress threatened western hegemony. Those on the left were naively credulous and those on the right victims of paranoid fantasies.
经济学方面的“可控试验”极少，但这些已经足够，而结果则十分明显，且出人意料。尽管在今天看来难以置信，但在上世纪60年代，许多严肃的左翼和右翼评论员都认为，俄罗斯的经济进步对西方霸权构成了威胁。左翼评论员天真而轻信，右翼评论员则患上了妄想症。
A perhaps apocryphal story tells of a Russian visitor, impressed by the laden shelves in US supermarkets. He asked: “So who is in charge of the supply of bread to New York?” The market economy’s answer – that not only is no one in charge, but it is a criminal offence for anyone to seek that position – is surprising. In the words of the economists Kenneth Arrow and Frank Hahn, “the immediate common sense answer to the question ‘what will an economy motivated by individual greed and controlled by a very large number of different agents look like?’ is probably ‘there will be chaos’.” Our intuition is that a centrally planned allocation of resources will be more efficient than an uncoordinated one. In a market economy, that error constantly leads us to overestimate the economic advantages, and longevity, of large companies.
有一个可能是虚构的故事，讲的是一位俄罗斯游客对美国超市中满满的货架感到吃惊。他问道：“那么谁掌管纽约的面包供应呢？”市场经济的回答令人吃惊：不但没有人掌管，而且任何想要掌管此事的人，都是在犯罪。用经济学家肯尼斯•阿罗(Kenneth Arrow)和弗兰克•哈恩(Frank Hahn)的话说，“对于‘一个由个人贪婪驱动、被大量不同代理人控制的经济会是什么样子？’这个问题，直接的常识性回答或许是，‘会发生混乱’”。我们的直觉是，资源的中央计划分配比缺乏协调的分配更有效。在市场经济中，这一错误不断使我们高估大公司的经济优势——乃至寿命。