The Goliaths,The Economist,June 22ed,2013
巨头，经济学人，2013年6月22日
In December 2004 Microsoft paid a massive $33 billion dividend to its shareholders.
2004年12月，微软向股东支付了高达330亿美元的股息。
The largest payment of its kind, it made up 6% of the increase in Americans' personal income that year.
这在此类分红中算是最大额度的，在那年，占美国个人收入增加值的6%。
Examples of how big firms can have a big impact do not come much starker.
关于大公司如何产生强烈影响的例子并不明显。
These kinds of firm-specific shocks are typically excluded from economists' models,
这些公司特有的危机通常被排除在经济学家的模型之外，
which assume that individual businesses' ups and downs tend to cancel each other out.
这些模型会假定个体工商户的收支往往会平衡。
Yet to understand how things like trade and GDP evolve, tracking the biggest companies is essential.
然而，了解贸易和GDP的发展，寻迹最大的企业是至关重要的。
At first sight, the numbers seem to justify taking a top-down view.
乍一看，这个数字似乎证明了一个普遍的观点。
The business world is huge: America has around 27m firms, Britain 4.8m.
商业世界是巨大的：美国有大约2.7千万家公司、英国4.8百万家。
Each country trades with hundreds of other countries across hundreds of industries, producing thousands of country-industry trade links.
每个国家同其他成百个国家，在成百个行业进行交易，创造出数千条国家工业贸易链。
The global network runs to the millions.
全球网络运行达数百万个。
Because economies are built of millions of firms and trading relationships,
因为经济由百万家公司及贸易关系所创造，
each seems like a speck of dust:individual companies and export channels should not matter.
每一条关系都类似于一粒灰尘：个人企业和出口渠道显得微不足道。
This suggests that only common shocks can explain aggregate fluctuations：
这表明，只有共同冲击可以解释总体波动：
a workers' strike at one firm is not enough, but a general strike is.
一个工人在一个公司罢工是不够的，但是总罢工就可以。
Yet aggregate shocks do not explain volatility very well.
然而总冲击同样也解释不了波动。
A 2007 Bank of Spain paper studies OECD countries' trade balances.
一家2007西班牙银行报社研究经济合作与发展组织中成员国的贸易平衡。
Common shocks (to whole countries or global industries) explain only 45% of the variations.
常见的冲击（整个国家或全球产业）只能解释45%的变化。
Hunting for the cause of the other 55% of trade fluctuations,
为了寻找其他的55%的贸易波动的原因，
the authors used finer data on 8260 country-industry "flows"（59 industries and 140 trading partners) for each OECD member.
作者用每个成员国8260的国家产业"现金流量"(59个产业和140个贸易伙伴）更精确的数据。
The data show that the picture of trade as millions of links is inaccurate;
数据显示，数以百万计的贸易联系前景是不准确的；
in fact, flows are extremely concentrated. Most links are unimportant.
事实上，流动非常集中。大部分的链接并不重要的。
For America 99% of trade flows accounted for just 25% of trade.
美国99%的贸易流动仅占贸易总额的25%。
But a few are vital: for the average OECD country
但有少部分是至关重要：在对普通的经合组织国家来说，
the 25 main country-industry flows explain two-thirds of trade, and the 100 largest 85%。Thank you.
25个主要国家工业流动可以解释三分之二的贸易，最大可达85%。谢谢。
