经济类论文范文英语

Macroeconomics is a sub-field of economics that examines the behavior of the economy as a whole, once all of the individual economic decisions of companies and industries have been summed. Economy-wide phenomena considered by macroeconomics include Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and how it is affected by changes in unemployment, national income, rate of growth, and price levels. In contrast, microeconomics is the study of the economic behaviour and decision-making of individual consumers, firms, and industries. Macroeconomics can be used to analyze how to influence government policy goals such as economic growth, price stability, full employment and the attainment of a sustainable balance of payments. Macroeconomics is sometimes used to refer to a general approach to economic reasoning, which includes long term strategies and rational expectations in aggregate behavior. Until the 1930s most economic analysis did not separate out individual economics behavior from aggregate behavior. With the Great Depression of the 1930s, suffered throughout the developed world at the time, and the development of the concept of national income and product statistics, the field of macroeconomics began to expand. Particularly influential were the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, who formulated theories to try to explain the Great Depression. Before that time, comprehensive national accounts, as we know them today, did not exist . One of the challenges of economics has been a struggle to reconcile macroeconomic and microeconomic models. Starting in the 1950s, macroeconomists developed micro-based models of macroeconomic behavior (such as the consumption function). Dutch economist Jan Tinbergen developed the first comprehensive national macroeconomic model, which he first built for the Netherlands and later applied to the United States and the United Kingdom after World War II. The first global macroeconomic model, Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates LINK project, was initiated by Lawrence Klein and was mentioned in his citation for the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1980. Theorists such as Robert Lucas Jr suggested (in the 1970s) that at least some traditional Keynesian (after British economist John Maynard Keynes) macroeconomic models were questionable as they were not derived from assumptions about individual behavior, although it was not clear whether the failures were in microeconomic assumptions or in macroeconomic models. However, New Keynesian macroeconomics has generally presented microeconomic models to shore up their macroeconomic theorizing, and some Keynesians have contested the idea that microeconomic foundations are essential, if the model is analytically useful. An analogy might be that the fact that quantum phisics is not fully consistent with relativity theory doesn´t mean that realtivity is false. Many important microeconomic assumptions have never been proved, and some have proved wrong. The various schools of thought are not always in direct competition with one another - even though they sometimes reach differing conclusions. Macroeconomics is an ever evolving area of research. The goal of economic research is not to be "right," but rather to be accurate. It is likely that none of the current schools of economic thought perfectly capture the workings of the economy. They do, however, each contribute a small piece of the overall puzzle. As one learns more about each school of thought, it is possible to combine aspects of each in order to reach an informed synthesis. The traditional distinction is between two different approaches to economics: Keynesian economics, focusing on demand; and supply-side (or neo-classical) economics, focusing on supply. Neither view is typically endorsed to the complete exclusion of the other, but most schools do tend clearly to emphasize one or the other as a theoretical foundation. • Keynesian economics focuses on aggregate demand to explain levels of unemployment and the business cycle. That is, business cycle fluctuations should be reduced through fiscal policy (the government spends more or less depending on the situation) and monetary policy. Early Keynesian macroeconomics was "activist," calling for regular use of policy to stabilize the capitalist economy, while some Keynesians called for the use of incomes policies. • Supply-side economics delineates quite clearly the roles of monetary policy and fiscal policy. The focus for monetary policy should be purely on the price of money as determined by the supply of money and the demand for money. It advocates a monetary policy that directly targets the value of money and does not target interest rates at all. Typically the value of money is measured by reference to gold or some other reference. The focus of fiscal policy is to raise revenue for worthy government investments with a clear recognition of the impact that taxation has on domestic trade. It places heavy emphasis on Say's law, which states that recessions do not occur because of failure in demand or lack of money. • Monetarism, led by Milton Friedman, which holds that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. It rejects fiscal policy because it leads to "crowding out" of the private sector. Further, it does not wish to combat inflation or deflation by means of active demand management as in Keynesian economics, but by means of monetary policy rules, such as keeping the rate of growth of the money supply constant over time. • New Keynesian economics, which developed partly in response to new classical economics, strives to provide microeconomic foundations to Keynesian economics by showing how imperfect markets can justify demand management. • Austrian economics is a laissez-faire school of macroeconomics. It focuses on the business cycle that arises from government or central-bank interference that leads to deviations from the natural rate of interest. • Post-Keynesian economics represents a dissent from mainstream Keynesian economics, emphasizing the role of uncertainty and the historical process in macroeconomics. • New classical economics. The original theoretical impetus was the charge that Keynesian economics lacks microeconomic foundations -- . its assertions are not founded in basic economic theory. This school emerged during the 1970s. This school asserts that it does not make sense to claim that the economy at any time might be "out-of-equilibrium". Fluctuations in aggregate variables follow from the individuals in the society continuously re-optimizing as new information on the state of the world is revealed. Later yielded an explicit school which argued that macro-economics does not have micro-economic foundations, but is instead the tool of studying economic systems at equilibrium. 宏观经济学是一种分场经济学的行为,研究是在整个经济中,一旦所有的个人的经济决策,为公司和产业被。宏观经济学认为经济现象包括国内生产总值(GDP)以及它是如何变化影响失业的国民收入的)经济成长率、价格水平。相反,微观经济学研究的就是经济行为和决策的个体消费者,公司和行业。宏观经济学可以用来分析如何影响政府的政策的目标,比如经济增长,价格稳定,充分就业和获取可持续国际收支差额。宏观经济学有时用来指一个经济理论的主要途径,包括长期战略的期望和理性综合行为。直到30年代为止,大部分的经济分析没有独立的个人经济综合行为举止。与1930年代的经济大萧条,遭受了在所有发达国家,发展国民收入的概念和产品的统计数据,但是研究领域的宏观经济学开始扩展。具有特殊影响力的想法是,约翰•梅纳德凯恩斯理论,努力向他们解释制定了经济大萧条。在那时候,综合国民经济核算,如同我们知道他们今天,是不存在的。经济学的一个挑战是一场斗争调和宏观经济政策和微观经济政策,模型。开始于20世纪50年代,macroeconomists发达micro-based模型的宏观经济行为(如消费函数)。1月Tinbergen荷兰经济学家第一个全面发展国家宏观经济模型,该模型他第一次建成为荷兰和后应用于美国和英国二战之后。第一个全球宏观经济模型,沃顿计量预测伙伴联系工程项目,发生在劳伦斯发起克莱恩和被提及他的嘉奖经济学诺贝尔经济学奖1980年。理论家如罗伯特·卢卡斯认为(是在上世纪70年代),认为至少有一些传统的凯恩斯(英国经济学家约翰梅纳德凯恩斯)宏观经济模型都是可疑的,因为他们不是来源于假设的个人行为,虽然现在还不清楚这些失败在微观经济的假定,或是对宏观经济模型。然而,最新凯恩斯主义的宏观微观模型提出了大致以支持他们的宏观经济理论有争议,一些凯恩斯主义者的想法,微观经济基础是必要的,如果模型是分析有用的。打个比方可能是,这样的事实,即量子phisics并不完全符合相对论´,并不代表没有realtivity是假的。许多重要的微观经济假设从来没有被证明,而有些人的证明是错误的。各种各样的思想学派并不总是在彼此的直接竞争,尽管他们有时会达到不同的结论。宏观经济学是一种前所未有的领域的研究。研究经济学的目标不是"正确",而是是精确的。很有可能是学校目前尚无一个经济思想完全捕捉运作方式的经济。不过,他们的贡献每一小块整体难题。当你学会更多关于每个思想学派,它能把方面的每一个为了达到一个通知的合成。传统的区别是留给经济学两种不同的方法,重点凯恩斯经济学和供方需求;(或古典)经济学、关注供应。也都是典型的观点完全排除其他,但大多数学校都往往清晰地强调一个或另一个是的理论基础。•凯恩斯经济学交融在总需求,以解释失业率和商业周期。商业周期波动,应减少通过财政政策(政府花费或多或少根据实际情况)和货币政策。早期凯恩斯主义的宏观经济学是“活动家,定期使用《召唤的政策稳定资本主义经济,虽然有些凯恩斯主义要求使用收入政策。•供给的经济学的作用很明显地在当前货币政策与财政政策。关注于货币政策应该是完全对价格的钱所确定的货币供应的需求的特点,为了金钱。它提倡货币政策,直接目标钱的价值,不目标利率。典型的钱的价值在于用参考金或其他参考。财政政策的重点是提高政府农业投资价值的收入为一个明确的认识税收的影响在国内贸易。它设置了过度强调了说的法律,它表明不会发生经济衰退需求下降、因为没有缺钱。•货币主义的带领下,由弗里德曼,认为始终通货膨胀是一种货币现象。财政政策拒绝,因为会导致“挤退”的私人生活。此外,它不希望对抗通货膨胀或通货紧缩采用主动需求管理在凯恩斯经济学,通过货币政策规则,即坚持的增长速度恒定的钱。凯恩斯•新经济发达的部分原因是为了适应新古典经济学、致力于提供凯恩斯现代经济学的微观经济基础显示出了市场的不完善就能名正言顺的需求管理等。•奥地利经济学是个自由放任主义的学校的宏观经济。它侧重于商业周期,而政府或中央银行的干扰导致偏离自然失业率的兴趣。•Post-Keynesian经济学所代表了凯恩斯经济学主流的作用,强调历史过程中不确定性和宏观经济。•新古典经济学。原理论动力的费用是凯恩斯经济学缺乏有效的微观经济基础——亦即其断言不成立于基本经济理论。这所学校出现在20世纪70年代。这所学校断言它是没有道理的主张经济会随时out-of-equilibrium”。波动的总变量遵从的在这个社会的个人不断re-optimizing新信息的状态的世界就会显现出来。后来取得了一个显式学校一样,认为宏观经济学没有微观经济基础,反而学习经济系统的工具在平衡。

Health careA new prescription for the poor为贫穷者新开的处方America is developing a two-tier health system, one for those with private insurance, the other for the less well-off美国正在发展一个双重的健康系统，一重是为那些有个人保险的人群，而另一重则是为那些不那么富裕的人群Oct 8th 2011 | NEW YORK | from the print edition“IT’S time for Dancing with the Stars!”, a woman announces enthusiastically. At this New York health centre, wedged between housing projects to the east and Chinatown to the west, “dancing with the stars” means dancing with a physical therapist. An old man stands up with a nurse and begins a determined samba.“是时候和明星一起跳舞了！”一位女士满怀热情地宣告。在这个坐落于房屋工程的西面，唐人街东面的纽约健康中心，“和明星起舞”的意思是和一位物理治疗师跳舞。一位老者和一个护士站起来，开始跳事先确定好的桑巴舞。Comprehensive Care Management (CCM), which runs this centre, tries to keep old people active. To do so, explains Joseph Healy, the chief operating officer, is in the company’s best interest. The government pays CCM a capped rate for the care of its members. If someone gets sick, his health costs rise and the company’s margin shrinks. Mr Healy argues that the system is the best way to provide good care at a low cost. Increasingly others seem to agree.经营这个中心的综合护理管理部门（CCM）努力保持老人们的活力。约瑟夫-海莉，首席运营官解释说，这样做符合公司的最佳利益。政府给这个部门一个封顶的津贴来让他们照顾这些人。如果有人生病了，他的健康成本就会上升，公司的利润就会萎缩。海莉先生确定说这个系统能够在一个低成本上提供最佳的护理。其他人也逐渐同意这个观点。Medicaid, America’s health programme for the poor, is in the process of being transformed. Over the next three years, New York will move its entire Medicaid population into “managed care”, paying companies a set rate to tend to the poor, rather than paying a fee for each service. New York is not alone. States from California to Mississippi are expanding managed care. It is the culmination of a steady shift in the way most poor Americans receive their health-care treatment.公共医疗补助，即美国的穷人健康计划，正在被改造的过程中。在接下来的 三年内，纽约将把整个接受穷人健康计划的人群纳入“管理关怀”之中，付给公司们一个事先定好的费用来照顾那些穷人，而不是按照项目来付费。纽约不是唯一这样做的州。加州，密西西比州正在拓展管理关怀计划。这代表一种正在进行中的稳步转变，即大部分贫穷美国人接受健康关怀方式的转变。Medicaid is America’s single biggest health programme. This year roughly one in five Americans will be covered by Medicaid for a month or more. It gobbles more federal and local money than any state programme, other than education. Costs will rise even more when Barack Obama’s health-care reform expands the programme by easing eligibility rules in 2014. Congress’s “supercommittee” is already considering cuts. However, there are more immediate pressures behind the present drive for change.公共医疗补助是美国最大的单一健康计划。今年，五个美国人中的一个就会被纳入该计划一个月或更长时间。除了教育之外，它比其他任何州的财政计划耗去更多联邦和地方的经费。当2014年奥巴马的健康保险改革放宽适用人群而使整个计划更加庞大的时候，成本将会进一步上升。众议院的“超级委员会”已经在考虑削减经费。然而，选择这种变化，将会有更多即刻的压力存在。Enrolment in Medicaid jumped during the downturn, from in December 2007 to in June 2010. Mr Obama’s stimulus bill helped to pay for some of this, but that money has dried up. Faced with gaping deficits, some desperate governors slashed payments to hospitals and doctors, or refused to pay for trips to the dentist or oculist. But much the most important result has been structural: the expansion of managed care.公共医疗补助计划的参与人数在经济滑坡期间从2007年12月的 4270万人跳到了2010年6月的5030万人。奥巴马先生的经济刺激经费能够帮助付掉其中的一部分，但是钱已经被用光。面对资金短缺，一些绝望的州长砍掉了给医院和医生的补助，或是拒绝支付牙医和眼科医生的旅行费用。但是，更多地，最重要的结果是结构上的：管理关怀的拓展。States have dabbled in managed care for decades. The trend accelerated in the 1990s, with the share of Medicaid patients under this form of care reaching 72% by 2009. Now, however, there is a strong push for the remainder. States that did not have managed care, such as Louisiana, are introducing it. Other states are extending it to people previously deemed off limits: California and New York, for example, are moving the elderly and disabled into that system of care. Texas is targeting more than 400,000 Medicaid beneficiaries in the Rio Grande Valley. Local politicians had resisted the move, nervous that care might deteriorate. But the yawning deficit meant that they were overruled.各个州涉足管理关怀已经有几十年的历史了。这个趋势在90年代得到加速发展，在2009年前使用这种护理方式的公共医疗补助病人占到了72%。现在，对于剩下的人，这也是很强的推动力。像路易斯安那州这样没有管理关怀的州正在引进管理关怀。其他州也把这个拓展到原先被认为不适用的人群：举例说像加州和纽约州，正在把老人和残障人士纳入这个系统中，德州的目标是在格兰德河谷超过400000公共医疗补助收益人群。地方政治家反对这个举动，他们担心这个护理系统将会变质。但是巨大的赤字意味着他们的观点注定要被批驳。The result is a country with two distinct tiers of health care. Most Americans with private insurance are still horrified by thoughts of health-management organisations and prefer to pay fees for each medical service. For the poor, managed care is becoming the norm.结果就是一个国家有两套截然不同的健康保险系统。大多数有个人保险的美国人仍旧害怕那些健康管理组织的想法而宁愿为单独的医疗服务付费。对于穷人来说，管理关怀已经成为一种常规。Advocates of managed care have high expectations. First, they hope that it will make costs more predictable. Second, they believe that the change will improve patients’ health. In managed care, a patient has a network of doctors and specialists. If the programme works properly, doctors can monitor all aspects of care, in contrast to the fragmented fee-for-service system. The contracts that states have with firms can set standards for quality. Texas, for instance, will cut 5% from a company’s payment if it does not meet what is required.管理关怀的鼓吹者有着很高的期待。首先，他们希望这能让成本变得可以预测，其次，他们相信，这个改变可以改善病人的健康。在管理关怀中，一个病人有一个由医生和专家组成的网络。如果这个计划运行良好，医生可以监测关怀的各个方面，相对于分离的的按服务付钱的系统来说。州政府和公司的合同可以为质量定下标准。德州，举例说，将会在付款中扣除5%如果公司没有达到要求的标准。The next step is to integrate care for those eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare, the federal programme for the old. These “duals” account for almost 40% of Medicaid’s costs and just 15% of its population. “If managed care can really deliver better care than fee-for-service”, says Diane Rowland, chair of the commission that advises Congress on Medicaid, “this is the population that could prove it.”下一步是整合那些同时符合公共医疗补助和长者医疗补助计划（联邦老人医疗补助）的人群。这些“双符合”人群占据了将近40%的公共医疗补助成本和仅仅15%的人口数量。“如果管理关怀能真正比按项目付费带来更好的服务”，戴安-罗兰德，委员会（指导国会在公共医疗补助政策上进行决策）主任说：“这是一群能证明管理关怀可行的人。”But some, such as Norma Vescovo, are sceptical. As the head of the non-profit Independent Living Centre of Southern California (ILCSC), Ms Vescovo serves Medicaid patients with severe health problems. Over the years she has often sued California on policies that she thinks will hurt her vulnerable clients. On October 3rd her case moved to the Supreme Court.但是一些人，例如像诺玛-凡斯科夫就对此表示怀疑。作为非盈利的南加州独立生活中心主任，凡斯科夫女士服务于那些有严重健康问题的接受公共医疗补助的病人。在这些年间，她经常控告加州政府在一些政策上会伤害她的一些脆弱的客户。在10月3日，她的案子被移到了上诉法院。The outcome of Douglas v Independent Living Centre will have profound implications for the future of Medicaid. Ms Vescovo’s suit concerns cuts to hospitals and doctors. But the case will also guide the course of managed care. If ILCSC and its co-plaintiffs win, private groups will continue to be able to challenge states on policies they think violate federal Medicaid law. Ms Vescovo, who argues that California’s payment cuts would eviscerate her clients’ access to services, worries that under managed care the disabled might not be able to see the specialists they need.道格拉斯 v 独立生活中心的结果将会对公共医疗补助有深远的意义。凡斯科夫女士的诉讼影响到医院和医生的津贴削减。但是这个案子将会引领管理关怀的进程。如果中心和其他原告胜诉，私人团体将会继续在那些他们认为违反联邦法律的政策上挑战州政府。凡斯科夫女士认为说加州的支付削减计划会让她的客户失去得到服务的机会，她还担心，在管理关怀之下，那些残障人士可能不能见到那些他们需要的专家。The question is how to supervise the experiments with managed care that are being carried out in various states. To date, Medicaid beneficiaries have been able to challenge the states in court. However, if the Supreme Court rules against ILCSC, that avenue will be closed. The Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) technically can intervene if states do not provide proper access to care. In reality, CMS has few tools to do so.问题是怎么监管在不同州试运行的管理关怀。到目前为止，公共医疗补助受益者已经能够在法庭中挑战政府。然而，如果上诉法庭结果不利于中心，那么这条路将会被关闭。如果州政府没有提供合适的关怀的话，公共医疗补助和长者医疗关怀中心理论上是能对此进行干涉，但事实上，他们没有太多办法。“I’m a big fan of managed care”, says Sara Rosenbaum, a professor at George Washington University, “but this transformation may happen with almost no federal oversight.” Medicaid beneficiaries are vulnerable, in worse health than Americans as a whole. Companies may struggle to cut costs and provide good care as well. If states do not draft their contracts properly, or fail to be vigilant in monitoring patients’ health, their experiment in managed care could be a disaster. On the other hand, if states are careful they could provide an answer to the question that has vexed America for years: how to provide good, cheap health care.“我是管理关怀的拥护者”，萨拉-罗森博姆，一位乔治华盛顿大学教授说，“但是这种转变可能在没有联邦监管的情况下发生。”公共医疗补助的受益者和你脆弱，健康程度整体上比一般美国人要差。公司可能在削减成本的同时挣扎着同样提供良好的服务。如果州政府们不好好起草他们的合同，或没有警觉地监控病人的健康的话，他们在管理关怀上的实验可能会是一场灾难。另一方面，如果州政府们认真的话，他们能为那个困扰美国人多年的问题提供答案，即怎么提供优质的便宜的健康关怀。

Half-way from rags to richesApr 24th 2008From The Economist print editionVietnam has made a remarkable recovery from war and penury, says Peter Collins (interviewed here). But can it change enough to join the rich world?EyevineCorrection to this articleKNEES and knuckles scraping the ground, the visitors struggle to keep up with the tour guide who is briskly leading the way through the labyrinth of claustrophobic burrows dug into the hard earth. The legendary Cu Chi tunnels, from which the Viet Cong launched waves of surprise attacks on the Americans during the Vietnam war, are now a popular tourist attraction (pictured above). Visitors from all over the world arrive daily at the site near the city that used to be called Saigon, renamed Ho Chi Minh City after the Communists took the south in the wreckage of an abandoned M41 tank another friendly guide demonstrates a dozen types of improvised booby-traps with sharp spikes that were set in and around the tunnels to maim pursuing American soldiers. The Vietnamese not only welcome the tourist dollars Cu Chi brings in, but are also rather proud of it. They feel it demonstrates their ingenuity, adaptability, perseverance and, above all, their determination to resist much stronger foreign invaders, as the country has done many times down the centuries. These days Vietnam also has plenty of other things to be proud of. In the 1980s Ho Chi Minh's successors as party leaders damaged the war-ravaged economy even more by attempting to introduce real communism, collectivising land ownership and repressing private business. This caused the country to slide to the brink of famine. The collapse soon afterwards of its cold-war sponsor, the Soviet Union, added to the country's deep isolation and cut off the flow of roubles that had kept its economy going. Neighbouring countries were inundated with desperate Vietnamese “boat people”. Since then the country has been transformed by almost two decades of rapid but equitable growth, in which Vietnam has flung open its doors to the outside world and liberalised its economy. Over the past decade annual growth has averaged . Young, prosperous and confident Vietnamese throng downtown Ho Chi Minh City's smart Dong Khoi street with its designer shops. The quality of life is high for a country that until recently was so poor, and its larger cities have retained some of their colonial charm, though choking traffic and constant construction work are beginning to take their toll. An agricultural miracle has turned a country of 85m once barely able to feed itself into one of the world's main providers of farm produce. Vietnam has also become a big exporter of clothes, shoes and furniture, soon to be joined by microchips when Intel opens its $1 billion factory outside Ho Chi Minh City. Imports of machinery are soaring. Exports plus imports equal 160% of GDP, making the economy one of the world's most open. All this has kept government revenues buoyant despite cuts in import tariffs. The recent introduction of company taxes is also helping to fill the government's coffers. Spending on public services has surged, yet public debt, at an acceptable 43% of GDP, has remained fairly stable. Having made peace with its former foes, Vietnam hosted Presidents Bush, Putin and Hu at the Asia-Pacific summit in 2006 and joined the World Trade Organisation in 2007. This year it has one of the rotating seats on the UN Security Council. Vietnam's Communists conceded economic defeat 22 years ago, in the depths of a crisis, and brought in market-based reforms called doi moi (renewal), similar to those Deng Xiaoping had introduced in China a few years earlier. As in China, it took time for the effects to show up, but over the past few years economic liberalisation has been fostering rapid, poverty-reducing World Bank's representative in Vietnam, Ajay Chhibber, calls Vietnam a “poster child” of the benefits of market-oriented reforms. Not only does it comply with the catechism of the “Washington Consensus”—free enterprise, free trade, sensible state finances and so on—but it also ticks all the boxes for the Millennium Development Goals, the UN's anti-poverty blueprint. The proportion of households with electricity has doubled since the early 1990s, to 94%. Almost all children now attend primary school and benefit from at least basic no longer really needs the multilateral organisations' aid. Multilateral and bilateral donors together have promised the country $ billion in loans and grants this year, but with so much foreign investment pouring in, Vietnam's currency reserves increased by almost double that figure last year. At least the aid donors have learned from the mid-1990s, when excessive praise discouraged Vietnam from continuing to reform, prompting an exodus of investors. Now the tone in private meetings with officials is much franker, says a diplomat who attends them. Vietnam has become the darling of foreign investors and multinationals. Firms that draw up a “China-plus-one” strategy for new factories in case things go awry in China itself often make Vietnam the plus-one. Wage costs remain well below those in southern China and productivity is growing faster, albeit from a lower base. When the UN Conference on Trade and Development asked multinationals where they planned to invest this year and next, Vietnam, at number six, was the only South-East Asian country in the top ten. The government's programme of selling stakes in publicly owned firms and exposing them to market discipline has recently gathered pace. At the same time the switch from a command economy to free competition has allowed the Vietnamese people's entrepreneurialism to flourish. Almost every household now seems to be running a micro-business on the side, and a slew of ambitious larger firms is coming to the stockmarket. Much of the praise now being showered anew on the country is deserved. The government is well on course for its target of turning Vietnam into a middle-income country by 2010. Its longer-term aim, of becoming a modern industrial nation by 2020, does not seem unrealistic. But from now on the going may get tougher. As Mr Chhibber notes, few countries escape the “middle-income trap” as they become richer. They tend to lose their reformist zeal and see their growth fizzle. A study in 2006 by the Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences concluded that further reductions in poverty will require higher growth rates than in the past because the remaining poor are well below the poverty line, whereas many of those who recently crossed it did not have far to stench of corruptionThe Communist Party leadership openly admits that the Vietnamese public is fed up with the endemic corruption at all levels of public life, from lowly traffic policemen and clerks to the most senior people in ministries. In 2006, just before the party's five-yearly congress, the transport minister resigned and several officials were arrested over a scandal in which millions of dollars of foreign aid were gambled on the outcome of football matches. The leadership insists it is doing its best to clean up, but a lot remains to be as bad as the corruption is the glacial speed of legislative and bureaucratic processes. Proposed laws have to pass through all sorts of hoops before taking effect, with endless rounds of consultations to build consensus. The dividing line between the Communist Party, the government and the courts is not always clear. The justice system is rudimentary. Lawyers have no formal access to past case files, so they find it hard to use precedent in legal government is part-way through a huge project to slim the bureaucracy and streamline official procedures. It recently cut the number of ministries from 28 to 22. Yet for the moment the bureaucratic logjam is stopping the country building the roads, power stations and other public works it needs to maintain its growth rate. Nguyen Tan Dung, the prime minister, says that if growth is to continue at its current rate, the country's electricity-generating capacity needs to double by 2010. That seems a tall order, to put it mildly. Soaring car-ownership is leaving the country's underdeveloped roads increasingly gridlocked. In an admirably liberal attempt to limit price distortions as oil surged above $100 a barrel, the government slashed fuel subsidies in February. But one effect will be to stoke inflation, already worryingly high at in March. Bank lending surged by 38% last year as firms and individuals borrowed to speculate on shares and government is finding it much harder to manage an economy made up of myriad private companies, banks and investors than to issue instructions to a limited number of state institutions, especially as the public sector is currently suffering a drain of talent to private firms that are able to offer much higher pay. What could go wrongAll this leaves Vietnam's continued economic development exposed to a number of risks: • Rising inflation—which is hurting low earners in particular—and a growing shortage of affordable housing could create a new urban underclass among unskilled workers who have left the land for the cities. Combined with rising resentment at official corruption and the increasing visibility of Vietnam's new rich, this could cause social friction and bring strikes and protests, chipping away at the political stability that has underpinned Vietnam's strong growth and investment.• Trade liberalisation and increased domestic competition will benefit some firms and farmers but hurt others—especially inefficient state enterprises. These could join forces and press the government to halt or even reverse the reforms.• The slumping stockmarket or perhaps a property crash could cause a big firm or bank to fail. Given the country's weak and untested bankruptcy laws and financial regulators, the authorities may find it hard to deal with that kind of calamity.• Natural disasters, from bird flu to floods, could cause chaos.• The economy could come up against the limits of its creaking infrastructure and the shortage of people with higher skills. Jammed roads, power blackouts and the inability to fill managerial and professional jobs could all bring Vietnam's growth rate crashing has set itself such demanding standards that even if some combination of these factors did no more than push annual growth below 5%, it would be seen as a serious setback. The foreign minister, Pham Gia Khiem, notes that Vietnam's current growth of around 8-9% is lower than that in Asia's richest economies at the same stage in their development. Despite the risks ahead, Vietnam has already provided the world with an admirable model for overcoming war, division, penury and isolation and growing strongly but equitably to reach middle-income status. This model could be followed by many impoverished African states or, closer to home, perhaps by North Korea. If it can be combined with gradual political liberalisation, it might even offer something for China to think about.

othing in literature can long s

time have been to sift out the