The cost of calamity

Economics focus

经济焦点

The cost of calamity

灾难的代价

The economic impact of natural disasters is often short-lived. Will this be the case in Japan? 

自然灾害产生的经济影响维持时间通常不久。日本这次也不例外吗？

Mar 17th 2011 | from the print edition 



THE full extent of the damage from the tsunami that hit Japan's north-eastern coast on March 11th is not yet known, but early estimates of the cost are big. Rebuilding homes, factories, roads and bridges could cost as much as $200 billion, some reckon. Quite apart from these direct costs, is the disaster likely to do lasting harm to Japan's economy?

3月11日袭击日本东北海岸的海啸所造成的全部损失还不得而知，但就目前的评估结果来看，损失相当惨重。有人说，房屋，工厂，公路以及桥梁的重建意味着多达2000亿美元的花费。先撇开这些直接损失不说，这次灾难对日本经济带来的伤害是否会持续很久呢？

Much will depend on the success of efforts to prevent a nuclear catastrophe. Assuming the situation at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant stabilises, the contours of the economic impact of the tsunami itself can already be discerned. Natural disasters disrupt production, much as less destructive episodes of bad weather do. In Japan the interruption to electricity supply means that output has been affected even in areas the tsunami did not directly inundate. Toyota, for example, halted production because of problems with parts and supplies. Operations were suspended in six of Sony's factories, only one of which was flooded. 

这在很大程度上取决于日本是否能成功阻止核灾难的发生。如果当时福岛一号核反应堆的状况成功被稳定住，海啸本身产生的经济影响应该已经被限定在一个明确的范围内了。自然灾害破坏生产力，这一点跟天灾一样，尽管天灾的破坏力要小一点。断电对日本来说，意味着即使在没有被海啸直接淹没的地区，生产也受到了影响。例如丰田停产正是因为汽车零部件和供应商方面出现了问题。索尼六个分厂都停止了运营，虽然其中只有一个被海啸淹没。

But such disruption is unlikely to persist. On March 16th Toyota announced that it was restarting the production of spare parts. As with bad weather, disasters cause some output to be postponed rather than lost. When production resumes, it is likely to be at a faster clip than usual. Studies of the economic effects of past natural disasters, as well as Japan's own experience after the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, provide further reassurance. They suggest that the macroeconomic effects of the tsunami, though hardly negligible, will not be devastating and will not last very long.

但停产现象不太可能延续下去。3月16日，丰田宣布重新开工生产备用零部件。有一点跟天灾一样，自然灾害延后一些成品的生产时间而不是不能生产。当生产恢复的时候，生产速度很可能就比常速快一些。对以往自然灾害造成的经济影响的研究，以及日本95年阪神大地震发生后得出的自身经验都能进一步支持这个说法。两者均显示，海啸的宏观经济影响，不能说无足轻重，但不会造成根本性的破坏，持续时间也不会很长。

How much a natural disaster reduces output over the medium term depends on a number of factors. Location matters: disasters that strike an industrial belt will be more economically crippling than ones that hit an area where little is produced; the economic effects of the tsunami would have been much worse if it had struck Japan's industrial heartland. And different kinds of natural disasters have different consequences for growth. In the medium term, not all effects are negative. A 2009 World Bank study found that by increasing soil fertility, a typical flood increases agricultural output in the year after it strikes (though output falls in the year it occurs). The benefits from higher agricultural production spill over to other sectors, and in developing countries where the farm sector is a bigger part of the economy this may be enough to lead to faster growth in manufacturing and services in subsequent years. 

从中期来看，一场自然灾害会减少多少生产取决于几个因素。对生产力的影响跟地理位置有关：击中工业带比击中几乎无生产能力地区的灾害经济后果要更加严重；倘若这次海啸集中了日本工业的中心带，那它的经济影响要严重得多。而不同类型的自然灾害对经济增长的影响也有所不同。从中期角度来说，并不是所有影响都是消极的。2009年世界银行的一份研究报告指出，一般洪水会让土地更加肥沃，因此遭受洪灾的土地的农业产量在来年反而会增加（尽管在洪灾当年产量会下降）。农业产量增加带来的好处会蔓延至其他产业，而在农业作为经济体中最大组成部分的发展中国家，这样的好处也许会大到让制造业和服务业在接下来的几年里经历更快的增长。

Earthquakes, on the other hand, have small but consistently negative effects on economic growth. This is because earthquakes do not just shut production down for a while. They also destroy factories, roads, electricity lines and offices. This destruction does not directly reduce a country's GDP, which measures the value of the flow of goods and services that an economy produces. But it does affect an economy's underlying productive capacity. The Japanese tsunami fits this template.

另一方面，地震对经济增长的消极影响很小，但具有持续性。这是因为地震造成的结果并不只是短期停产，还会破坏工厂，道路，电线和办公场所。这些被破坏的设施不会直接减少一国的GDP,因为GDP是根据一个经济体生产提供的所有商品服务的流量价值来衡量的。但它们会影响到一个经济潜在的生产能力。日本这次的海啸造成的正是这种情况。

As long as these assets remain out of commission, the output they would have produced is, in theory, lost. In practice, this negative effect can partly be made up by using plant and machinery in areas unaffected by the disaster. Most factories do not run at full steam all the time; output from plants that are still working can be increased to make up for lost production elsewhere. 

只要这些资产没有投入使用，理论上可以说，假设它们投入使用而能够产出的产品算是损失了。但实际上，可以通过未受灾害影响的工厂和机器抵消部分消极影响。多数工厂并不是一直都开足产能运行；还在正常生产的工厂可以增加产量，为其他分厂损失的产量做出一部分补足。

An analysis of the effect of the Kobe earthquake by George Horwich of Purdue University provides some reason to hope that this might happen in Japan. The quake ravaged many of the facilities of what was then the world's sixth-largest container port and the source of nearly 40% of Kobe's industrial output. Over 100,000 buildings were completely destroyed, and many more badly damaged; 300,000 people were rendered homeless; over 6,000 died. Yet despite this devastation in a big production centre, the local economy recovered very fast. Even though less than half the port facilities had been rebuilt by that stage, within a year import volumes through the port had recovered fully and export volumes were nearly back to where they would have been without the disaster. Less than 15 months after the earthquake, in March 1996, manufacturing activity in greater Kobe was at 98% of its projected pre-quake level. 

普渡大学的George Horwich就阪神大地震影响做出的分析报告为我们提供了一些希望日本也许能出现上述情况的理由。当时的地震蹂躏了当时被成为世界第六大集装箱码头――神户的许多设施及其近40%工业产品的原材料。超过10万幢建筑被完全破坏，还有很多受到严重破坏；30万人被迫流离失所；6000多人死亡。但是尽管这样的毁灭性破坏发生在生产中心地带，地方经济却恢复得非常快。一年以后，码头设施的重建才完成了不到一半，但神户的进口额已经完全恢复，出口额也几乎达到即使没有地震才会达到的水平。那次地震后不到15个月，1996年3月，神户的制造业发展已到达震前所定目标水平的98%。

Mr Horwich reckons that the likely reason for this rebound in output and economic activity, even as swathes of infrastructure still lay in ruins, is that output can be produced using different combinations of labour and capital. Although a disaster may destroy physical capital, things can be made using more labour or using it more intensively than before. In addition, rebuilding is easier than building up capital the first time around, because it mainly aims to replicate a pattern of investment rather than figure out what to invest in. And productivity growth may accelerate when new, and often superior, machinery is installed.

Horwich认为，在这种即使基础设施满目苍夷尚未恢复的情况下出现的产量和经济活动反弹，其中原因可能在于利用不同的劳动力资本配置来进行生产。尽管灾害可能会破坏物理资本，产品还是可以通过使用更多劳动力或者在原本基础上增加劳动强度来生产。另外，重建比起首次建造资本要容易，因为重建的主要目的在于再造投资模式而不需要再思考怎么投资。当崭新而且通常更先进的机器安装好之后，生产力也许会快速得到提高。

A glimmer, at least

至少还有一线光明

Reconstruction itself, of course, also helps to offset the negative impact of a drop in output in the aftermath of a disaster. Business booms for builders and producers of capital goods. Disasters probably do not actually stimulate the economy because additional production in some sectors may be displacing spending elsewhere, though this is less of a worry in an economy with a lot of spare capacity. Certainly, the year of the Kobe quake was not a bad one for the Japanese economy, which grew by 1.9% in 1995 compared with 0.9% growth in 1994. 

当然，重建本身会对灾害带来的GDP下降这样的消极后果起到部分抵消作用。建筑商和资本商品生产商会生意兴隆。灾害事实上也许不会对经济起到刺激作用，因为某些产业的额外产量也许正被其他产业的花费所取代，但这对于一个有充分闲置产能的经济体来说不成问题。显然，阪神大地震对于日本经济来说并不坏，它导致日本经济和1994年的0.9%相比，在1995年增长了1.9%。

There are grounds to hope, then, that this month's terrible events will not cause lasting damage to Japan's economy. But there are worries, too. The nuclear crisis adds greatly to uncertainty. Consumer and business confidence is fragile. With interest rates already at zero, policymakers have little wiggle room. Japan's manufacturing sector is running closer to full capacity now than in the mid-1990s, making it harder to make up for lost output. When disasters occur can matter as much to the economy as how bad they are. 

那么，我们就有理由对本月的严重灾害不会给日本经济带来持续性破坏这一点寄予希望。但也有让人担心的地方。核危机大大增加了不确定性。消费者和商业信心变得十分脆弱。利率已经是零，政策制定者几乎没有回旋的余地。跟90年代中期相比，日本当今的制造业产能更加接近饱和，这让补足损失掉的产量显得更加困难。灾害发生的时机与本身的严重程度对经济具有同样的影响力。