Agriculture

Green shoots
绿色崛起

Mar 19th 2009 | HONG KONG
From The Economist print edition

No matter how bad things get, people still need to eat
不管事情变得多糟糕，人们仍然需要食物

AT A time when much of the global economy is falling apart and demand both for consumer goods and the firms that make and finance them is collapsing, the notoriously cyclical world of agriculture is holding up remarkably well. Prices for grains and meat are down from the peaks of mid-2008, but are 30-50% above their averages over the past decade. There is reason to believe that this strength is more than just another of the many bubbles that have recently inflated, only to pop.

当全球经济体的一大部分开始解体，同时构成这些经济体并为其提供资金的消费品和实业的需求开始衰退的时候，总是周期性陷入困境的世界农业却开始持续向上的良好发展。2008年中期，世界谷物和肉类的价格开始从最高点回落，但是依旧比过去几十年的平均水平高30-50个百分点。我们有理由相信，与那些近期开始恶性膨胀而破碎的经济泡沫比起来，农业经济的抗打击强度要高得多。

Higher prices are hardly a universal blessing: they are good for farmers, many of whom are poor, but bad for consumers. Some of the increase can be blamed on the shift of crops from food to fuel, prompted by wildly inefficient subsidies. But high prices are also a sign of progress because their single largest cause is the steady increase in demand from poorer countries, as people there eat more food—especially more protein. More people are better nourished thanks to a bit more grain, a lot more meat, and much more milk.

偏高的价格注定不会是皆大欢喜的：这对于大部分还处在贫穷的农民来说是好事，但是对消费者来说却无疑是糟糕的。某些价格的上扬可以归咎于在离谱的低效补贴的刺激下，某些国家将原本是食物的农作物当作燃料来使用。但是高价同时也是产业的进步一个标志，因为价格升高的最大的独立因素是贫穷国家的需求正在不断平稳的上升，那里的人们开始需要更多的食物——特别是蛋白质。只要有多一些的谷物、肉类和牛奶，更多居民的营养状况将会更好。

China’s role has been profound, reflecting its enormous economic progress and huge population. In the past decade, says Carlo Caiani of Caiani & Company, an investment-advisory firm based in Melbourne, the consumption of milk has grown seven-fold, and that of olive oil six-fold. China is consuming twice as much vegetable oil (instead of less healthy pork fat), 60% more poultry, 30% more beef and 25% more wheat, and these are merely the obvious foods. Scores of niches have expanded dramatically: people are drinking four times as much wine, for example.

令人瞩目的经济进步和庞大的人口数量，让中国在这一方面扮演的角色更加的意义深远。根据墨尔本一家咨询公司Caiani & Company的Carlo Caiani的说法，与十年前相比，中国的牛奶和橄榄油的消费量分别增长了6倍和5倍，菜油（替代了不够健康的猪油）的消耗量翻了一番，家禽、牛肉和小麦同比上涨了60%、30%和25%。上面所列举的数据仅仅来自一些显而易见的食物，事实上许多市场的扩大是动态的，比如说，人们正在饮用四倍之多的啤酒。

And yet even with all this growth, people in China still, on average, consume only one-third as much milk and meat as people in wealthy countries such as Australia, America and Britain. The gap is even larger with India, which is also growing fast. Overall, protein intake in Europe and America is unlikely to expand much, but a combination of rising incomes and population in developing countries could increase demand by more than 5% annually for years to come. “Once people are accustomed to eating more protein, they won’t take it out of their diet,” says Mr Caiani.

虽然消费量上升的如此可观，但仅就牛奶和小麦两方面来看，中国人民的平均消费水平只是富裕国家如澳大利亚、美国和英国的三分之一。若拿印度来与这些发达国家比较，差距就更大了。总的来说，欧洲和美洲的蛋白质摄入量已经趋于饱和，但在发展中国家，收入和人口增长的双重刺激使得人民的食物需求每年以5%的速度递增。“当人们开始习惯蛋白质食物的时候，他们就不会想把它们从餐桌上拿走了”，Caiani先生如是说。

Expanding supply at the same rate will be difficult, because the amount of arable land under cultivation is growing by only a fraction of a percentage point each year. In China and India many of the most fertile areas are the ones being developed for roads and factories. That means existing land is becoming more valuable, and must become more productive.

以相同的速率扩大供给量在未来将会愈加困难，因为可耕种耕地的数目每年只会以很小的百分比增加，更糟的是，在中国和印度，很多肥沃的土地被用来建设道路和工厂，这就意味着耕地更加宝贵，而产量必须更高才能满足人民的需求。

The consequences stretch from one end of the food chain to the other, as higher food prices prompt a response. BASF, one of the world’s largest producers of agrochemicals, saw 9% growth last year in agricultural sales, including 16% growth in Asia. It expects the industry to grow by 17% this year, which has begun well, the global economic tumult notwithstanding.

这种影响会从食物链的一端延伸到另一端，最终导致食品价格的升高。去年，世界最大的农业化学药品生产商之一BASF在农业领域的销售上升了9%，而在亚洲是16%。尽管世界经济持续动荡，但基于如此良好的开端，BASF期望今年的销售量能增长17%

Its competitors are also prospering. The share prices of Agrium, CF Industries, Bunge and Syngenta spiked last year along with food prices, then tumbled (along with the shares of nearly every other company), but then stabilised, even as the rest of the stockmarket continued to tank. Monsanto, which a decade ago had been praised and then trashed for selling highly efficient genetically modified seeds, has seen its popularity restored for exactly the same reason. After years of strong growth, and with the prospect of more to come, its shares are valued at 20 times trailing earnings, nearly double the market average.

该公司的竞争对手也经营着它们蒸蒸日上的生意，Agrium, CF Industries, Bunge和Syngenta的股价去年先是随着食品价格的上涨而大幅上扬，随后大跌（当时几乎所有其他公司的股价都在下挫），然后稳定下来而没有随着股市一起崩溃。孟山都，十年之前因为其经营的高效转基因种子而闻名于世，该公司经过多年强劲的发展，获得了众多的荣誉好评，其股价是追踪盈余的整整二十倍，几乎是市场平均水平的两倍。

Interest in the industry is still growing. A conference for fund managers tied to agriculture held annually in Sydney by Austock, an Australian broker, attracted a few dozen contrarian souls three years ago. This year’s event, which began on March 16th, had to be restricted to several hundred ticket-holders, with many others turned away. Deals are also being done. On March 13th Terra Firma, a private-equity firm based in London, announced it would buy 90% of Consolidated Pastoral Company, the vast Australian cattle holdings of the Packer family, which encompass 5m hectares (12m acres) of land.

人们对农业相关产业的兴趣只增不减，每年在悉尼，澳大利亚经纪公司Austock都会举办一届基金经理的会议，在三年前就已吸引了几十位逆向投资的灵魂人物。去年3月16日，举办方只发放了几百张入场卷，因此很多慕名而来的人只能转身离开。产业之间的交易也一直在进行着，在3月13日，一家位于伦敦的私人直接投资公司Terra Firma宣布收购联合畜牧公司90%的股份，后者是Packer家族的澳大利亚大型畜牧产业，占地5百万公顷（12万英亩）。

In February Nufarm, an Australian agrochemical maker, won approval for its acquisition of AH Marks, one of Britain’s oldest chemical companies, which has a valuable portfolio of herbicides. Nufarm itself only barely avoided being acquired in 2007 in a joint bid by an American private-equity firm and a Chinese state-owned company. Shares of Mosaic, a maker of fertiliser, have been swept by one acquisition rumour after another. Last year COFCO, China’s state-controlled food conglomerate, bought 5% of Smithfield, the world’s largest pork producer. Al Qudra, an Abu Dhabi-based investment company, said it had bought big tracts of farmland in Morocco and Algeria, and was closing in on purchases in Pakistan, Syria, Vietnam, Thailand, Sudan and India.

去年二月，澳大利亚农业化工品制造商Nufarm获得了不列颠老牌化工公司之一、生产一系列高价值除莠剂的AH Marks的收购许可。而此前在2007年，Nufarm公司好不容易才避免了一家美国私人直接投资公司和一家中国国有企业的联合收购。世界第二大化肥生产商Shares of Mosaic不停的陷入一个又一个恶意收购案。而在去年，中国国有粮食集团COFCO购买了世界最大肉类生产商Smithfield5%的股份。位于阿布扎比的公司Al Qudra声称它们购买了摩洛哥和阿尔及利亚的大量耕地，同时正在跟进巴基斯坦、叙利亚、泰国、苏丹和印度的收购案。

In November China Agri-Industries, a subsidiary of COFCO, established a partnership with Wilmar, the world’s largest trader in palm oil. Landkom, listed on London’s AIM market, and Black Earth Farming, listed in Stockholm, have each made big investments in farming in Ukraine. And reports are circulating in China about local investors buying 50,000 hectares of farmland in Argentina, and considering other investments in Argentina and Brazil.

时年十一月，中粮集团（COFCO）的子公司中国粮油控股有限公司，与世界最大的棕榈油经销商丰益国际建立了合作关系。伦敦交易所二板市场上市的Landkom和斯德哥尔摩证券上市的Black Earth Farming各自在乌克兰农业市场投入了大量资金。当前有报告显示，中国本土投资者在阿根廷收买了5万公顷的耕地，而且考虑是否继续在阿根廷和巴西投资。

Even China is finally opening up to private agricultural investment, in part because new laws allow farmers to lease land, thus making possible economies of scale. Asian Bamboo, a company that is listed in Frankfurt, leases 27,000 hectares in Fujian province. It announced profits for 2008 of (原文此处有一欧元符号)21m ($30.4m) on sales of (原文此处有一欧元符号)44m, reflecting how, at least for the moment, agriculture can be an extraordinarily high-margin business.

虽然现在中国已经开放私有农业投资许可，一部分原因是新近通过的法案允许农民流转土地承包权，这就导致合理的规模经济的形成。法兰克福的上市公司Asian Bamboo在福建省承包了2万7千公顷的农田，公司声称它们2008年的利润额达到两千一百万欧元（折合三千零四十万美元），销售额为四千四百万欧元，这些数据——至少在当时——揭示了农业如何成为一种超高利润的行业。

There are limits to what can be done, however. By far the most ambitious of all the land deals in the past year was Daewoo Logistics’ contract with the government of Madagascar to lease 1.3m hectares, almost half the country’s arable land, to produce corn for Daewoo’s home country, South Korea. But after riots and a coup in Madagascar, the deal is off. These tensions are not unique. In response to local concerns about the loss of critical food supplies, several governments have imposed taxes or other restrictions on exports: on a key ingredient of fertiliser in China, on grain in Argentina, on rice in India. That sort of meddling undermines some investments and businesses. But in a strong market, it makes the businesses that can operate freely all the more lucrative and valuable. 

但是，当前所有允许的商务操作都有不同的限制，截至目前为止，最充满风险的土地交易发生在去年，韩国大宇物流(Daewoo Logistics)租赁了马达加斯加一千三百万公顷的农田，接近该国可耕耕地的一半，目的是为了生产谷物来满足国内的需要。但是在国民骚动和一场突然的政变之后，马达加斯加的新总统在上台后立即宣布该交易作废。类似的紧张局势在世界范围内并不罕见，在某些国家，政府为了打消当地民众对紧缺食物不断流失的担忧，就对相应的出口，比如说中国的化肥关键成分、阿根廷的粮食和印度的大米，进行征税或加上其他的限制，如此这样的政府干涉就削弱了投资和商务的基础。而在坚挺的市场中，商业操作更加自由，因此产生的利润将会更高。

本文章为话题广告

今天看到了这样一篇文章：　

　我算不上是一个老股民，炒股也不过是3年多，当然也经历着上证指数从2000多点爬到6124点的牛市。当上证还是5000多点的时候，身边没买的朋友开始叫我卖了一些股票，不要等股市跌回原型，竹篮打水一场空。经过了几天思想上的挣扎，最后我决定拿一小部分钱为家里添置一些家具，就把剩下的钱分两批：一份作冒险型，用来买股票，另一份钱作是保本但进取，用作购买基金。如今，我的股票仓已经损失将近70%、就反思为什么买的股票会跌得那么多，但我定投的华安收益债券基金却依然平稳。最近听说，华安收益债券基金的升级版华安强债基金又推出来了，债券投资以外，还可兼顾股市投资！比纯债基金收益高，比买股票风险低！华安强债基金有下面这些好处是买股票所不能比拟的原因在于：
　　投资成本比较均衡，最大限度地分散了风险。常规基金一次性行为面临高买低卖的风险，而强债基金即可投资股票二级市场的增强型债券基金更容易受到投资者的青睐，堪称保守投资者的进取之选。以华安强化收益债券型基金为例，首先，该基金资产配置范围更广，也更灵活。除了涵盖偏债基金的高收益债组合与打新股之外，还可以参与二级市场的投资，而其股票投资比例上限只有20%。既有利于保证本金的安全，又存在行情转好时从股票二级市场获取较高回报的可能。其次，收益稳健，分红有保障，且分红比例高。该基金契约规定，在符合法定分红条件下每季度至少分红一次，每年收益分配次数最多可为12次，全年分配比例不低于年度可供分配收益的50%。

我自己也炒股票，深知这个股民的痛苦，从07的兴奋，到08的崩溃，到09年的无奈。。。股市有风险，入市须谨慎。这是咱们股民每天都在说的话，可谁都想不低风险高收益。股市波动太大，除了几个大头，咱们这些散户就只能被人宰了。债券很稳定，可那点收益。。。怕是赶不上CPI的速度。正如前面的文章所说，基金的话，有股票配置，有债券配置，有专门的投资经理在打理，更重要的是将散户的钱变成了庄家，当然收益会比散户自行投资要好多了。

从网络上搜索了一下，华安收益基金貌似在去年表现不错：

相信新推出的加强型基金也肯定是基民不错的选择。

A special report on entrepreneurship
关于创业精神的特别报道

Lands of opportunity
机遇之地

Mar 12th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Israel, Denmark and Singapore show how entrepreneurialism can thrive in different climates
以色列、丹麦和新加坡显示了创业精神如何在不同的土壤中开花结果

DOV MORAN’S desk is littered with the carcasses of dismembered phones. Mr Moran has already had one big breakthrough: inventing the now ubiquitous memory stick. But he dreams of another one: he wants to separate the “brains” of the various gizmos that dominate our lives from the “bodies” to enable people to carry around tiny devices that they will be able to plug into anything from phones to cameras to computers. Mr Moran sold his memory-stick business to SanDisk for $1.6 billion, creating a thriving technology cluster near his office. This time he wants to build an Israeli business that will last, challenging the giants of the camera and phone businesses. 

Dov Moran的桌上杂乱堆放着支离破碎的电话残骸。他已然完成了一项创举，即发明了现在使用广泛的记忆卡，而现在则梦想着一个新目标：将那些人们日常离不开的各种各样小电器的核心部件分离出来，就像将大脑从躯体中取出，这样大家就可以随身携带这些小设备并随时接驳到从电话、相机到计算机任意一种电子产品中。Moran将自己的记忆卡业务以16亿美元的价格卖给了SanDisk公司，建立了一个生机勃勃的技术产业集群，现在他希翼建立一家可持续发展的以色列本土公司，来挑战那些照相机和手机业务的巨无霸们。

Israel is full of would-be Dov Morans. It is home to 4,000 high-tech companies, more than 100 venture-capital funds and a growing health-care industry. Innovations developed in the country include the Pentium chip (Intel), voicemail (Comverse), instant messaging (Mirabilis, Ubique), firewalls (Checkpoint) and the “video pill”, which allows doctors to study your insides without the need for invasive surgery.

以色列充满了将会成为Dov Moran这样的创业者，该国拥有4000家本土高科技公司、100多只创业资本基金和日渐成长的卫生保健产业。在以色列发展起来的革新包括：奔腾芯片（Intel公司）、语音邮件（Comverse公司）、即时信息（Mirabilis和Ubique公司）、防火墙软件（Checkpoint公司）和“药丸式摄像机”（该技术使得医生不通过开刀手术也可对身体内部进行检查）。

Even more than other countries, Israel has America to thank for its entrepreneurial take-off. A brigade of American high-tech companies, including Intel and Microsoft, have established research arms there. And a host of Israelis who once emigrated to America in search of education and opportunity have returned home, bringing American assumptions with them. Many Israeli entrepreneurs yo-yo between Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv; almost 70 Israeli companies are traded on NASDAQ. 

相比其他国家，以色列的创业腾飞更让美国感到欣慰。大量的美国高科技企业，包括英特尔和微软，均在以色列建立了研究团队，许多曾移民美国寻求更好教育水平和商业机会的以色列人带着美国信念返回祖国。众多以色列人在选择硅谷还是特拉维夫进行创业时犹豫不决；将近70家以色列公司在美国纳斯达克上市交易。

The Israeli government helped by providing a ready supply of both human and physical capital. Israel has the world’s highest ratio of PhDs per person, the highest ratio of engineers and scientists and some of the world’s best research universities, notably Technion. The country’s native talent was supplemented by the arrival of 400,000 well-educated Jewish refugees from the former Soviet empire. 

以色列政府为这些创业者提供了现成的人力与物力资本，该国的人均博士学位比例世界第一，工程师和科学家的高比例比例无人能比，此外还拥有多所世界顶尖的研究型大学，特别是Technion工业大学。来自前苏联受过良好教育的40万名犹太难民更是增加了以色列的本国人才实力。

However, Israel’s main qualification for entrepreneurialism is its status as an embattled Jewish state in a sea of Arab hostility. The Israeli army not only works hard to keep the country at the cutting edge of technology, it also trains young Israelis (who are conscripted at 18) in the virtues of teamwork and improvisation. It is strikingly common for young Israelis to start businesses with friends that they met in the army. Add to that a high tolerance of risk, born of a long history and an ever-present danger of attack, and you have the makings of an entrepreneurial firecracker. 

然而，以色列创业精神的主要禀赋还是其作为犹太国家在四面楚歌的状态下产生的。以色列军队不仅努力使国家保持技术领先，而且训练年轻国民（在以色列，18岁就会被应征入伍）具有团队精神与应变能力的品质。年轻的以色列士兵在部队里就开始和朋友做生意的现象非常普遍。以上这些，加上高风险承受能力、悠久的历史和经常存在的受袭危险，成为点燃以色列创业精神的星星之火。

Danish dynamism
丹麦活力

Compared with a lion like Dov Moran, Frederik Gundelach is a mere cub, but he has some of the same sense of purpose about him. Sitting in one of Denmark’s “growth houses” (incubators for entrepreneurs), he places a flask on the table and launches into an elaborate explanation.

如果说Dov Moran像一只雄狮，相比而言，Frederik Gundelach则仅是头幼狮，但他对自己的未来也有和Moran类似的打算。在丹麦“成长之屋”里（创业者孵化器机构），他把一个烧瓶放在桌上，开始了详尽的解说。



Mr Gundelach claims that he and his father have discovered a novel way of boiling water that does not require the application of heat. He hopes to sell the flask to outdoor types and soldiers, but that is not the limit of his ambition. The chemical reaction that heats the water can also be used to heat or cool houses, he claims, radically reducing the cost of domestic heating and the threat of global warming.

Gundelach宣称自己和父亲发现了不需使用加热设备将水烧开的新颖办法。他希望将这种烧瓶卖给户外爱好者和士兵，然而这并不能满足他的雄心壮志。通过化学反应的方法为水加热同样可以用来房屋取暖，他说，这样可以从根本上降低国内取暖的成本，减轻全球变暖的威胁。

It is too early to say whether Mr Gundelach’s flask will turn out to be a miracle in a bottle or a pipedream, but the Danish government is doing everything it can to give him the support he needs. Denmark is engaged in a social experiment to test whether it can embrace capitalist globalisation yet continue to preserve its generous welfare state. The Danish economy has traditionally been divided between big multinational companies (such as Carlsberg, a brewing behemoth) and a welter of small family firms. The government now wants to add a third economic force: start-ups with the potential for rapid growth. 

现在就断定Gundelach的烧瓶创意是瓶中美梦或妄想还为时过早，但是丹麦政府正在尽其所能为他提供所需的一切。丹麦正在进行一项社会性的实验，来检验是否能在融入资本全球化的进程的同时继续保持慷慨的高福利政策。传统上丹麦经济两极分化，既有大型跨国企业（例如嘉士伯，酿造业巨头），也有苦苦挣扎的家庭作坊。现在政府希望引入第三种经济力量：具有高增长潜力的创业型企业。

The government has done everything a tidy-minded Scandinavian country can to cultivate these start-ups. The World Bank ranks Denmark fifth in the world for ease of doing business. There is a network of growth houses—ready-made offices that provide start-ups with many of the advantages of large companies such as consulting advice, legal services and conference rooms. The government has created a public venture-capital fund, the Vaekstfonden, and is now trying to change attitudes to entrepreneurs and promoting “education for entrepreneurship”. 

丹麦这个头脑精明的斯堪迪纳维亚国家正在倾尽全力培养这些创业型企业。在经商环境优越度的评比中，世界银行将丹麦排到了第五位。“成长之屋”也已形成网络，这些现成的机构为创业者提供了很多大型公司的才具有的优势，诸如咨询建议、法律服务和会议场所。政府建立了公共创业资本基金：Vaekstfonden，并正努力转变人们对创业者的看法，以及推动创业教育等。

When Muslim countries boycotted Danish goods in 2005 after a Danish newspaper published some disrespectful cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, wags joked that this hardly mattered because the only things that Denmark produced were beer and bacon. But the government’s embrace of entrepreneurialism is clearly changing the economy. Denmark is already home to about 20% of Europe’s biotech companies. It also has thriving clean-technology, fashion and design industries. As a proportion of GDP, Danish companies attract more venture capital than any other European country. 

当2005年丹麦一家报纸刊登了亵渎先知穆罕默德的漫画，这一事件后穆斯林国家抵制丹麦商品。那些丹麦的支持者开玩笑说抵制就抵制，反正丹麦人只会生产穆斯林不能沾的两样东西：啤酒和熏肉。但丹麦政府所信奉的创业精神无疑的改变了该国经济。丹麦已经拥有欧洲20%左右的生物技术公司，而且正在蓬勃发展清洁技术、时装与设计等产业。丹麦公司引入的创业资本与GDP的比例已经超过任何一个欧洲国家。

Sizzling Singapore
令人振奋的新加坡

At first sight Denmark and Singapore do not have much in common, yet they share not only the same official enthusiasm for entrepreneurialism but also many of the same policies. Singapore’s government has invested heavily in digital media, bio-engineering, clean technology and water purification, creating huge incubators and enticing foreign scientists with fat pay packets, as well as setting up a public venture-capital fund that has in turn brought in lots of private venture capital. More than 5% of Singapore-based companies are backed by venture capital. 

乍一看丹麦和新加坡没有太多共通之处，但不仅两国政府都热衷于创业精神，而且制定了相同的激励政策。新加坡政府大量投资于数字媒体、生物工程、清洁技术和净水技术，建立大型企业孵化器机构，以高薪吸引外国科学家，同时也设立了一支公共创业资本基金，该基金随后引入了许多私人创业资本。5%以上的新加坡企业得到了创业资本的支持。

The government has done everything in its power to make life easy for entrepreneurs, which has earned it first place in the World Bank league table for ease of doing business. It is also trying hard to encourage a traditionally passive population to become more innovative. Schools teach the virtues of entrepreneurialism. The universities put ever more emphasis on business education and links with industry. The Nanyang Technological University (whose chairman, like that of the National University of Singapore, is an alumnus of Hewlett-Packard) offers a graduate degree in technopreneurship and innovation. 

政府在权力范围内尽其所能让创业者们更加轻松，世界银行商业环境优越度排名表中新加坡排在第一位。该国也努力鼓励那些消极人口更加具有创造力。中小学教授学生创业精神美德，大学更加强调商业教育，并注重于产业相结合。南洋理工大学（该校主席和新加坡国立大学主席一样，都出自惠普公司）提供科技创业与创新学科的硕士学位教育。

Singapore sees entrepreneurialism as a prerequisite to future growth. It has spent the past few decades climbing up the “value chain” from manufacturing to services and from trade to finance. Its biggest test yet may be to create knowledge industries and produce companies that can commercialise intellectual breakthroughs. 

新加坡视创业精神为未来发展的先决条件。过去几十年，通过从生产业到服务业，从贸易业到金融业的转型，该国努力爬上了“价值链”的顶端，她目前面临的最大考验可能是构建知识产业并创建那些能把智力发明商业化的公司。

All three countries have both advantages and disadvantages when it comes to embracing entrepreneurship. Israel depends too heavily on America and is being hit hard by the downturn there. Denmark is too egalitarian. A top personal-income-tax rate of 63% drives the most successful entrepreneurs out of the country. 

在热衷创业精神的时候，这三个国家都有优缺点：以色列太过于依赖美国，正在经受美国经济低迷的影响。丹麦太讲求平均主义，最高可达63%的个人所得税正在逐出那些成功的创业者。

Singaporeans have even deeper cultural problems with entrepreneurship. The best and brightest have little appetite for risk-taking entrepreneurship, and most people suffer from an excessive fear of bankruptcy, according to Monitor. The country’s consumers are anything but venturesome: for all the island’s cultural diversity, they remain obsessed by Western brand names. The country is paying a heavy price for this. A Singapore-based company, Creative Technology, invented a digital music player, the NOMAD, two years before Apple launched the iPod, but Creative’s NOMAD looked like a clunky CD player rather than a miniature fashion accessory. It received $100m from Apple for patent infringement, but that did not make up for the loss of a mass market.

对于创业精神，新加坡则具有更深层次的文化问题。Monitor杂志发现，最优秀、最聪明的人才不热衷富于冒险的创业，大部分人过于恐惧破产。该国的消费者也绝不冒险：尽管这个岛国具有文化差异性，但国民只着迷于那些西方品牌，国家为此付出了巨大的代价。在苹果公司发布iPod两年前，新加坡的创新科技公司就发明了数字音乐播放器“NOMAD”，但创新的NOMAD被看作是一个蠢笨的激光唱机，而不是迷你时尚小配件。虽然苹果公司向创新科技支付了1亿美元的侵权费用，但这无补于那失去的巨大市场。

Still, the governments of all three countries remain enthusiastic supporters of the entrepreneurial idea. The Danes and the Singaporeans regard it as their ticket to success in a global economy and the Israelis as a matter of survival. All three are also helping to spread the creed in their regions. Arab countries are beginning to realise that the best way to deal with Israel is to copy its vibrant economy. Denmark serves as a model to European leaders such as France’s Nicolas Sarkozy who want to combine dynamism with social protection. The Chinese regard Singapore as a useful laboratory for reform. In the 1980s China asked Goh Keng Swee, Singapore’s former finance minister, to advise on the development of its special economic zones; today it is keeping a watchful eye on the city-state’s model of state-sponsored entrepreneurship. 

尽管存在问题，上述三国政府仍然对创业思想给予热情支持。丹麦和新加坡视其为全球经济的成功钥匙，以色列则定位为生存之道。三国都在所在地区推行这种信条。阿拉伯国家开始意识到对付以色列最好的办法是复制其充满活力的经济模式。丹麦为如法国总统尼古拉•萨科齐那种希望将经济活力社会保障有效结合的欧洲国家领导人树立了一个标杆。中国视新加坡为其改革的成功研究室，上世纪80年代曾邀请新加坡前任财长吴庆瑞为其经济特区的发展献言建策；如今中国正密切关注新加坡这个城市国家政府资助创业的模式。