梁方仲对经济史统计工作的贡献——兼评经济史研究中的统计方法与计量经济学方法

The Contributions of Liang Fangzhong on the Statistics of Chinese Economic History-comments on Statistical Method and Econometric Method in Economic History Research

梁方仲先生是著名的中国社会经济史专家,他编著的《中国历代户口、田地、田赋统计》是中国经济史统计的奠基性著作;他在经济史统计中所采取的基本原则,即重视定量的实证研究,重视对数据的校勘求真,重视对数据产生机制的考察,应该为经济史工作者所遵循。在经济史研究中,历史学和经济学两种研究路径的分歧并不在于是否使用计量方法,而是在于具体使用何种计量方法。要准确了解社会经济状况,需要利用统计学方法对数据准确性进行详细探究;而如果对数据的准确性缺乏细致的了解,而汲汲于祭出"计量经济学方法",则是不足取的。经济史研究必须建立在对社会经济状况有准确的定量认识的基础上。

Liang Fangzhong was a prominent expert on Chinese social and economic history. His book the Statistics of Domicile,Land and Land Tax in Chinese History were masterpieces on that field. The basic principles which he practised in economic history statistics,viz. thinking highly of empirical research,the collation of data records and the investigation of the mechanism how the data come out,should be followed by other researchers of economic history. This paper also argues that the divergence of historic and economic approaches which are the two main approaches in the research of economic history is not whether to adopt measurement methods,but which method to take,statistical or econometric. In order to understand the real conditions of the society in the history,meticulous exploration of data by statistical method is necessary. However,it is meaningless to urging by using econometric method without thorough comprehensions of accuracy of data.