韦恩•鲁尼(Wayne Rooney)最近与曼联(Manchester United)签下了新合约。这份合同保证在4年的有效期内，鲁尼将获得5000万英镑，相当于周薪25万英镑。作为一名球员，鲁尼禀赋出众，但他没有什么其它明显的才能。如果不是干上了足球这一行，他的收入可能会很一般。职业球员的生活激动人心，他们是媒体关注的焦点，也是美女们倾心的对象。所以，即使拿的薪水少很多，鲁尼可能还是愿意当一名职业球员。
在许多人心目中，斯坦利•马修斯爵士(Sir Stanley Matthews)是英格兰最伟大的球员。他的自传中讲述了一种截然不同的生活。20世纪60年代早期，当他职业生涯结束时，他当时的最高周薪仅为20英镑。他踢过的最伟大的一场比赛，是1948年在汉普敦公园球场举行的战后庆典比赛，对阵双方是苏格兰和英格兰，现场共有15万名观众（结果英格兰获胜）。当时英格兰足球总会(Football Association)寄出的一封信中，附上了马修斯的出场费14英镑（按当前价格计算约合500英镑），以及从斯托克赶往格拉斯哥的火车票钱（二等车厢）。马修斯想要报销在卡莱尔车站餐厅喝茶所花的6便士（合今天的1英镑），这一请求却遭到了拒绝：此项花销不可报销。
鲁尼与马修斯之间的收入差额叫做经济租金(economic rent)。经济租金是指从事一项活动得到的实际收入，与获取从事这项活动所需资源的回报之间的差额。这个名称带有误导性，原因在于人们最初阐述这一概念时，农业还是经济活动的主要形式。一般认为，这个概念是英格兰经济学家大卫•李嘉图(David Ricardo)提出的，但其实苏格兰乡绅兼学者詹姆斯•安德森(James Anderson)比他早50年便提出了这个概念。在这一场较量中，获胜的是苏格兰。
"苏格兰西海岸谷物价格总是高于东海岸，我（安德森）想问，其原因何在？难道是因为洛锡安地主与克莱德谷地主相比，前者更加仁厚，而后者更为贪婪？"他解释道，其实不然。"并不是土地的租金决定了农产品价格，而是农产品价格决定了土地的租金。这似乎是一个需要加以解释的悖论。"
安德森随后对这一悖论的阐述，在250年后的今天仍经得起检验。对谷物的需求，决定了需要开垦多少土地：为满足这种需求而投入生产的最差的土地，只能赚回生产的成本，而好一点的土地则能赚回符合其优势价值的租金。谁从这些收入中获益是一个政治问题。鲁尼的收入水平，部分源自于足球运动的收入规模，另一部分则取决于他的经纪人的讨价还价能力。马修斯的二等车厢车票，并不是一个无足轻重的细节，而是展示了马修斯工作的社会背景——我们可以猜想英格兰足总官员前往格拉斯哥坐的不会是二等车厢。洛锡安地主的生活方式是由决定该地区谷物需求的经济力量，以及允许当地士绅抽取大部分收入的封建制度共同决定的。经济租金的数额和分配是政治经济相互作用的产物。
正如安德森率先提出的那样，要讨论经济租金的金额和分配，首先要理解经济租金产生的机制。他曾经问道"如果克莱德谷的绅士们，表现出异乎寻常的爱国心和鼓励制造业的热忱，下定决心要降低租金"，结果会如何？谷物价格会因此而下降吗？（提出这个问题时，他仿佛预见到了银行家高额奖金所引发的公愤。）绝对不会。"有洞察力的读者能够自己勾勒出完整的图景，"他这样总结道。当今的读者也必须这样做。
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001037844
Wayne Rooney recently signed a new contract with Manchester United. The agreement guaranteed him £50m over its four-year life, equivalent to £250,000 a week. Mr Rooney is an exceptionally gifted footballer, but has few other evident talents. If he were not employed as a footballer, his earnings would probably be modest. And the life of a professional footballer is an exciting one, which attracts media attention and glamorous women. So it is likely that Mr Rooney would be willing to play professional football even if he were paid much less.
Many think of Sir Stanley Matthews as England's greatest footballer. His autobiography describes a rather different lifestyle. At the end of his career, in the early 1960s, he was receiving the then maximum wage of £20 a week. One of his greatest matches was a postwar celebration in which Scotland met England in 1948 at Hampden Park before a crowd of 150,000 people (England won). A letter from the Football Association encloses Matthews's match fee of £14 (about £500 at current prices) and his (second-class) rail fare from Stoke to Glasgow. But his claim for 6d (about £1 today) spent on a cup of tea in the station buffet at Carlisle was rejected: not a reimbursable expense.
The difference between what Rooney is paid and Matthews was paid is economic rent. Economic rent is the difference between actual earnings in an activity and the returns necessary to attract resources to that activity. The name seems misleading. The explanation is that early elaboration of the idea dates back to when agriculture was a principal form of economic activity. The concept is generally attributed to the English economist David Ricardo, but the idea was set out 50 years earlier by a Scottish gentleman farmer and scholar, James Anderson. Scotland won this one.
"Whence comes it, I [Anderson] may ask, that the price of grain is always higher on the west than on the east coast of Scotland? Are the proprietors in the Lothians more tender-hearted and less avaricious than those of Clydesdale?" No, he explains, "it is not the rent of the land that determines the price of its produce, but it is the price of that produce which determines the rent of the land. This seems to be a paradox that deserves to be explained".
Mr Anderson's subsequent account of that paradox stands up well 250 years later. The demand for corn determined how much land had to be cultivated: the worst land that needed to be brought into production to satisfy that demand would earn only the cost of production, and better land would earn rents that measured the value of their superiority. Who benefited from these earnings was a political issue. Rooney's earnings are partly the result of the scale of revenues that football generates, and partly a result of the ability of his agent to bargain for them. Matthews' second-class ticket is not an unimportant detail – we can assume that the officers of the Football Association did not travel second class to Glasgow – but a demonstration of the social milieu within which Matthews worked. The lifestyle of the proprietors of Lothian was the result of a combination of the economic forces that determined the regional demand for corn and a feudal regime that enabled the local gentry to extract a substantial fraction of the benefits. The amount and distribution of economic rent is the product of the interplay of politics and economics.
As Mr Anderson was the first to argue, to comment on the amount and distribution of economic rent we must begin by understanding the mechanisms that gave rise to it. He might have been anticipating the furore on bankers' bonuses when he asked what might happen if "the gentlemen of Clydesdale, from an extraordinary exertion of patriotism and an inordinate desire to encourage manufactures, should resolve to lower the rents". Would the price of grain fall in consequence of this? By no means. "Readers of penetration will be able themselves to finish the sketch," he concluded. They must do so again today.
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