纽约英语口语网新版
金融世界
第 9 讲: 不完全竞争

上一讲我们谈的话题是 Competition - 竞 争。我们学了这样几个英文词汇:

1 perfect competition 完全竞争
2 imperfect competition 不完全竞争
3 monopoly 垄断

如同我们在上一讲中提到的,完全竞争只是一种理论研究的假设,它在现实生活中是不存在的。真实市场上的竞争是 imperfect competition,不完全竞争。

在这一讲中,我们要请专家进一步谈谈竞争的问题,以及九十年代初澳大利亚推行全国竞争政策的情况。

1992年,当时的澳大利亚总理基廷为了鼓励竞争,促进经济发展,委托以希尔莫教授为首的一个委员会起草了一份全国竞争政策报告,并以这份报告为蓝本,1995年开始在全国推行了全国竞争政策。

澳洲广播电台金融节目主持人巴里克拉克解释了制定这样一项全国竞争政策的必要性:
A national policy was needed because of the increasing integration of Australia into a single market rather than several separate state markets. Further, with the advent of globalisation, Australia needed to become more competitive internationally to maintain and improve its standard of living. 需要制定一项全国竞争政策,因为澳大利亚全国不断结合成为一个单一的市场而不是分别的几个州的市场。另外,由于全球化的趋势,澳大利亚需要在国际上更具有竞争能力,以维持和改善它的生活水平。

巴里克拉克在他的谈话中使用了这样几个词汇:

1 integration 结合,整体
2 globalisation 全球化
3 standard of living 生活标准,生活水平

负责起草澳大利亚全国竞争政策的希尔莫教授介绍了这项全国竞争政策的作用。他说:
Competition policy is the policies that governments enact in order to deal with where and how and at what level of intensity they want to use the force of competion in driving an economy and driving a society. 竞争政策是政府制定的政策,用以决定在哪一方面、如何以及在多大程度上使用竞争的力量来推动经济和社会的发展。

Now a competition policy decides where, when and how you're going to use competition as opposed to where, when and how you might use an administered system of a government or legislated monopoly. 现在是由竞争政策来决定在何处、何时以及使用何种方法来展开竞争。过去与其相对的是在何处、何时和使用何种方法来实行某种管理制度,比如由政府或法律规定的垄断。

We coined the term National Competition Policy both to emphasise that we needed policies about where and how competition could be better used, and to emphasise that those policies should be national. 我们创造了“全国竞争政策”这样一种说法,是为了强调我们需要一项关于在何处和如何更好地进行竞争,同时强调了这些政策应是全国统一的。

澳大利亚全国竞争政策的重点之一就是把国家所有的企业也置于公平竞争之下。这一政策促进了经济的活跃发展,也引起了社会的变化。澳广金融节目主持人巴里克拉克对此作了解释:

As we try to increase competition, albeit imperfectly, and we embrace the market system, we're changing the way society functions. In other words, we are reducing the size of the public sector and increasing the size of the private sector. 在我们试图增加竞争时,尽管是不完全的竞争,我们就接受了市场机制,改变着社会运转的方式。换句话说,我们缩小了公营机构的规模,扩大了私有企业的规模。
Historically, when the government provided utilities to us, the relationship that existed was between citizen and government. However, as we take these utilities out of the public sector and into the private sector, then the relationship changes - we become consumers interacting with the market. 从历史上来说,当政府为我们提供公用设施时,那种关系是公民与政府之间的关系。但是,当把这些公用设施从公营转为私营之后,这种关系也随之变化,我们变成了消费者,与市场相互发生影响。

And as we move from the role of citizen to consumer we lose rights to question the way these essential utilities operate in our society. 随着我们从公民的角色转变成为消费者,我们就失去了对这些基本设施在我们社会中运营方式提出质询的权利。

When they were public institutions we had the right under Freedom of Information legislation to find out what was going on. That kind of information is denied to us in the private sector because of commercial sensitivity. 当这些公用设施属于公营机构时,根据信息自由立法,我们有权知道这些机构运营的情况。但是私营企业会由于商业的敏感性而拒绝透露这些情况。

巴里克拉克在谈话中提到这样几个词:

1 public sector 公营机构,政府资助或控制的企业
2 private sector 私营企业
3 essential utilities 基本公用设施,如煤气水电等
4 commercial sensitivity 商业敏感性