LONDON may be Europe's commercial capital,but not all Britons are thrilled about that. In a poll conducted in 2014,two-thirds of non-Londoners reckoned that London had a positive impact on theBritish economy as a whole, but fewer than a third thought London's strengthwas good for their city. London lures skilled workers and productive companiesaway from other parts of Britain. It also lures workers and firms from acrossEurope—something that makes many Britons, both in London and beyond, bristle.Indeed, London's mop-topped mayor, Boris Johnson, this week joined the campaignto persuade Britons to withdraw from the European Union.
伦敦或许是欧洲的商业首都，但不是所有英国人都对此感到兴奋。在2014年进行的一次民调中，三分之二的非伦敦人认为，总的来说，伦敦对英国经济具有正面影响。但是，三分之一弱的人认为，伦敦的优势有利于他们的城市。伦敦吸引高级技工和高效企业离开英国其他地区，亦吸引工人和企业离开欧洲大陆——这是让包括伦敦人和非伦敦人在内的许多英国人感到恼火的事情。事实上，伦敦的卷毛市长鲍里斯·约翰逊本周已经加入了劝说英国人退出欧盟的造势活动。
London dominates Britain, accounting for23% of its population and about a third of its economic output. The city grewto enormous size in the 19th and early-20th century, when it served as thepolitical and economic hub of a global empire. The post-war decline in itspopulation, a result both of the loss of empire and of policies intended tocurb its growth, ended in the 1980s, when the globalisation of financerejuvenated the city's main industry. Greater London is the fifth-largestmetropolitan economy in the world, according to the Brookings Institution, athink-tank. It is the EU's largest city, by both population and output.
伦敦称霸英国，占其人口的23％，经济产出的大约三分之一。这个城市曾在充当一个全球性帝国的政治和经济中心的19世纪和20世纪早期发展到了巨大的规模。战后因为帝国之失去以及倾向于抑制增长的政策所导致的人口衰落，在金融全球化让这个城市的主要工业实现复兴的上世纪80年代结束了。据智库布鲁金斯研究所，大伦敦地区是世界第五大城市经济体。无论是按人口还是产出计算，它都是欧盟最大的城市。
Yet London should arguably be bigger thanit is. It is Europe's most important financial centre, and one of its biggesthubs for information industries and professional services—the European analogueto New York city. But London accounts for just 4.5% of the EU's output, afteradjusting for variation in the cost of living, and just 2.9% of its population,whereas New York accounts for 8.1% of America's GDP and 6.3% of its population(see chart). Were European integration ever to yield something like a UnitedStates of Europe (and Britain ever to be part of such an enterprise), Londonwould probably swell in size and importance.
然而，说起来，伦敦应该比现在还要大。它是欧洲最重要的金融中心，并且是信息产业和专业服务的一大中心——相当于欧洲的纽约。但是，在剔除生活成本后，伦敦在欧盟产出和人口中的占比仅为4.5%和2.9%；而纽约在美国GDP和人口中的占比却达到了8.1%和6.3%。（见图表）。倘若欧洲融合最终诞生出一个类似于欧洲合众国（而且英国也成为这大企业的一部分）的东西，伦敦在规模和重要性方面会大幅上升。
Why should that be the case? Economistshave touted the benefits of cities since 1826, when a German one named JohannHeinrich von Thünen tried to explain why farmers gather in villages rather thanliving by their fields. Paul Krugman, in a paper published in 1991, homed in onthe role of “increasing returns to scale” in driving the growth of cities.Because it is expensive to move people and goods, customers want to be whereproducers are and vice versa. As cities grow, increasing returns kick in: themore people who live in a particular place, the more attractive that placebecomes to others. Mr Krugman focused on clustering in manufacturing. Twotrading regions with a slight imbalance in population would naturally evolveinto a developed core and an underpopulated periphery, he argued. In the paper,which the Nobel committee cited when awarding him the prize for economics, MrKrugman pointed as an example to Europe, where industrial activity isconcentrated in the north-west.
为什么这么说呢？经济学家自德国人约翰·海因里希·冯·杜能试图解释农民宁愿群居在村庄中也不愿住在田边的原因的1826年起，就一直在大力宣扬城市的种种好处。保罗·克鲁格曼曾在1991年发表的一篇论文中，着重论述了“收益递增渐成规模”在推动城市发展中的作用。由于移动人口和商品成本高昂，客户希望位于生产商所在地，生产商也希望位于所在地。随着城市发展，收益递增效应开始显现：生活在一个地方的人越多，这个地方就会变得对其他人更具吸引力。克鲁格曼聚焦了制造业的聚集。他指出，两个人口稍不平衡的贸易地区会自然地进化为一个发达的中心和一个人口稀少的外围。克鲁格曼在这篇诺贝尔奖评委会在授予他经济学奖时所引用的论文中所举的例子就是工业活动聚集于西北部的欧洲。
Manufacturing no longer drives urbanisationin the rich world. In 2009 Edward Glaeser and Joshua Gottlieb of HarvardUniversity surveyed recent research in order to distil the nature and causes ofthe “wealth of cities”. Although manufacturing firms have grown less likely toconcentrate together in dense areas, thanks to the falling cost and hassle ofshipping, firms in knowledge-based industries like technology and finance havebecome more prone to clustering. In cities with lots of skilled workers,productivity tends to rise with population density. The authors reckon that itis now the advantage of associating with other clever people, and theintellectual stimulation and exchange that results, that gives the biggestcities their magnetism.
工业化已经不再推动富裕世界的城市化了。2009年，哈佛大学的爱德华·格莱泽和Joshua Gottlieb曾为总结“城市财富”的性质和原因，进行过一次最新的调查。尽管制造业企业已经因为成本下降和航运不便而变得不大有可能集中在人口稠密的地区。但是，像技术和金融等以知识为基础的企业却变得更易于集中了。在拥有大量技工的城市中，生产力往往是随着人口密度的上升而提高。作者认为，如今与聪明之人有联系的优势以及这种优势所带来的智力方面的启发和交流，赋予大城市以磁力。
Congestion slows cities' breakneck growth:housing and transport infrastructure seldom keep pace with demand. As a result,rather than a single metropolitan goliath, economies tend to develop a seriesof cities distributed by size according to “Zipf's law” (named after GeorgeZipf, an American linguist). The largest city tends to be twice the size of thesecond-largest, three times the size of the third-largest, and so on. Americancities roughly follow this pattern. In the less-integrated EU, however, thereis instead a jumble of big cities and a dearth of medium-sized ones.
拥堵放慢了城市的高速增长：住房和交通等基础设施几乎没有与需求保持同步。结果，除了一个单独的大都市之外，各个经济体往往会按照（以美国语言学家乔治·齐普夫命名的）“齐普夫定律”发展出一系列依大小分布的城市。最大城市的规模往往是第二大城市的2倍，第三大城市的3倍，以此类推。美国的城市大致就是依照这个模型而来的。然而，在融合程度有所欠缺的欧洲，却是大型城市林立，中等城市匮乏。
Deeper integration would push Europe towarda more American distribution. London would probably be the main beneficiary,given its particular strengths. Europe's financial markets remain highlyfragmented. Its stockmarkets are about half the size of America's, despite thesimilar size of the two economies; European corporate-bond markets are about athird of the size. Few Italian firms, for instance, turn to their country'srelatively small equity or bond markets for funding. Instead, they simplyborrow from Italian banks, which tend to have their headquarters in Milan. TheEU is currently trying to rectify that by making it easier to borrow, lend andinvest across its internal borders, in the hope of reducing funding costs forEuropean firms. If such efforts bear fruit and Britain remains a part of theunion, firms based in London would help more foreign companies issue shares orbonds there, at the expense of other European financial centres. Easing thecross-border provision of services, another thing on the EU's long-term agenda,would likewise prove a boon for London.
深度的融合会推动欧洲走向一种更加美国化的分布。鉴于其特殊优势，伦敦会成为主要的受益者。欧洲的金融市场仍就高度分散。股市规模约为美国一半，尽管两大经济体体量相似；欧洲的企业债市场约为美国的三分之一。例如，只有很少的意大利企业转向它们国家相对较小的股权或债券市场融资。相反，它们都是意大利各大银行借款，这使得意大利的银行往往把总部设在米兰。目前，欧盟正在试图扭转这种情况。具体地说，就是让跨内部边境的借款、放贷和投资变得更加容易，以期降低欧洲企业的融资成本。如果这类尝试获得成功而且英国仍旧是这个联盟的一部分，总部设在伦敦的企业就会以牺牲欧洲其他金融中心为代价，帮助更多的外国企业在伦敦发行股份和债券。如此的话，作为欧盟长期议程上的另一项要务，消除各类服务的跨境限制会证明自己是对伦敦的一个利好。
That prospect would naturally discomfitcontinentals. Just as New York rose head and shoulders above Philadelphia andBoston as the American economy grew and integrated, Paris, Frankfurt and Milancould all expect to cede ground to London in a close-knit EU. But London'sboosters might also blanch at the growth deeper integration might bring. Itwould mean more building, for starters. Greater London added 23,000 new housingunits in the year to September, less than a third of the new units approved inNew York last year. Were London to follow the example of New York, its GDP andpopulation could eventually eclipse that of the rest of Britain, lengtheningthe political and cultural shadows cast across the rest of the country. MrJohnson is angling for a promotion to prime minister; ironically, a vote to remaincould make his current job one of the most desirable in Europe.
这种前景自然会让欧洲大陆感到不安。正如纽约当年是随着美国经济的发展和融合而超越了费城和波士顿一样，预计巴黎、法兰克福和米兰也可能全都在一个高度融合的欧盟中败给伦敦。但是，伦敦的鼓吹者或许也对进一步融合可能带来的增长感到不安。首先，这会意味着更多的建筑。大伦敦地区在截至去年9月的一年中增加了23000套新建住房，比纽约去年获批的新建住房少了三分之一。如果伦敦以纽约为例发展下去，其 GDP和人口可能最终会大幅超越英国其他地区，将自己的政治和文化影响力扩展至整个国家。约翰逊正在想方设法升至首相；具有讽刺意味的是，投票留在欧盟可能会让他目前的工作成为欧洲最炙手可热的职位。
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