Chapter 12 Section 5 Constructing "Learning Economy"

Dickens, a famous British writer in the 19th century, wrote at the beginning of his masterpiece: "The age we live in is such an age, it is the best of times, it is also the worst of times; it is an age of wisdom, and it is also an age of ignorance. ; the age of faith, and the age of doubt; the age of light, and the age of darkness; the spring of hope, and the winter of despair; we have everything, and we have nothing; Go to hell too." At the beginning of the 21st century, while human society has achieved more than 200 years of sustained economic growth and unprecedented economic prosperity, it is also facing many severe economic challenges: many countries in Africa have experienced slow economic growth for hundreds of years, and the problem of world poverty is still serious ; The income gap between countries in the world has been widening since the industrial revolution; Japan's economy has been in a long-term stagnation since 1991; the Latin American debt crisis in the 1990s caused Latin American countries to lose for 10 years; In 2001, as the US economic growth declined at an alarming rate, the world economy was experiencing a serious synchronous deceleration, and the short-term economic prospects became bleak.

As a specialized discipline for the study of economic issues, the ultimate value of economics is reflected in practice. In a word, economics must be applied.There has always been a major omission in current economics in addressing the challenges of economic life, that is, while emphasizing human self-interest, ignoring scientific initiative is the result of human freedom.As a result, current economics has not been able to prescribe a long-term effective prescription for the world's most pressing challenge—long-term sustainable economic growth. Influenced by the structural school of development economics, after the Second World War, many developing countries took the promotion of capital accumulation as the primary task of economic development, and forced the savings rate to increase through policy means.Decades of capital accumulation-oriented policies have shown that the growth performance of most developing countries has been disappointing.Neoclassical economics entered the mainstream of economics in the 1950s and had a major impact on economic policy.However, the World Bank has abandoned the "Washington Consensus" (trade liberalization, market pricing, macroeconomic stabilization, and privatization) based on mainstream economics, and instead emphasized the overall improvement of social capabilities and the quality of growth.Neoclassical economics failed to offer strong insights into Japan's long-term stagnation and the prospects of the "new economy" in the United States, and encountered serious setbacks in guiding capital account liberalization in emerging market countries due to several financial crises.

In his essay "The End of Laissez-faire", Keynes pointed out meaningfully: "In the long run, mankind will finally solve its economic problems... Our problem is how to design a social organization that can be as efficient as possible. , but without conflicting with our notion of a satisfactory way of life. It should not be political agitation or hasty experimentation, but thought that prompts the next step. We need a spiritual effort to clarify our feelings. Our sympathy and judgment tend at present to be divided, a painful and exhausting state of mind. In this sphere of action, unless reformers pursue with unwavering harmony of reason and feeling a clear and definite goal, otherwise it will be difficult to achieve success.”

In my opinion, the root cause of human beings’ shared long-term economic prosperity lies in the existing economic system itself, that is, the existing institutional model is not flexible. Human society needs a more flexible economic system. To solve this problem, economic system innovation must ultimately be taken , at the national and regional level to establish an economic system with adaptive efficiency, the so-called "learning economy". As the name does not imply, this learning economy is not that learning economy.Learning economy here is a noun phrase, not a verb-object phrase. It refers to the economy that can learn, that is, Learning Economy. The origin of the idea of ​​"learning economy" is the productivity revolution.Marx has always attached importance to the role of changes in production technology and production methods in the development of human history, and has always believed that productivity is the most revolutionary and active factor in social development.But at that time, Marx did not clearly point out the revolutionary change law of productivity.According to Kuhn's philosophy of science, science develops alternately through accumulation within paradigms and revolutions in new paradigms, but the form and time of scientific revolutions are uncertain and unpredictable; scientific revolutions lead to technological revolutions, and technological revolutions lead to Productivity revolution.But on the other hand, the development of the economic system is inert, that is, path-dependent, which produces the contradiction between the productivity revolution and the economic system, which is concentrated in the difficulty of structural adjustment and the financial risks in the process of global financial integration.Since the existing economic system is difficult to cope with the challenges brought by the productivity revolution, human beings must carry out economic system innovation, so that the "learning economy" finds the rationality of existence. The "learning economy" can smoothly and timely adjust the economic structure, implement effective financial risk management, thereby generating long-term and sustained economic growth and creating sufficient job opportunities.

A "learning economy" may include the following: product markets where monopolistic and fully competitive competition coexist, elastic labor markets and capital markets that allow revolutions to occur but manage risk are "muscles," routine and adaptive efficiency The emerging sector is the backbone, and the flexible "National Learning System" is the catalyst.This economy has a sound social security system, but it will not fall into the "welfare trap".Pragmatic macroeconomic policies are the "steering wheel" of economic operations, including fiscal policies adapted to different stages of productivity development, artistic monetary policies, and supply-side policies; the weakest sector under an unsound international financial system is the external sector, which Sectors, especially the capital account, are as fragile as the human body's knee joints.Therefore, effective financial risk management is the "knee pad" of the "learning economy" to prevent the financial crisis caused by the reversal of international capital.

Then, can the theory of "learning economy" help China's economic reform in the near and medium term? Thirty years of reform practice shows that China's economic reform requires an economic theoretical foundation and sufficient theoretical preparation.The urgent need for reform in the near and medium term is to create a large number of job opportunities in the process of structural adjustment and solve the serious unemployment problem.These problems pose serious challenges to the Chinese economic theory circle.Since there are major flaws in the mainstream economic theory in the world today, and the future development is facing severe challenges, we cannot "pick all the vegetables in the basket". "Learning the economy" is a new theory of economic development. I believe that it will give some inspiration to China's economic reform in the near and mid-term.

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