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As this tale indicates, retailers have an incentive to offer discounts early, ahead of rivals, since doing so just might snag them an extra few sales.
正如这个故事所表明的，零售商有动力领先于竞争对手而提前提供折扣，因为这样做可能会为他们多抢到几笔生意。
Some customers might enjoy this long window during which they can peruse discounted goods.
有些顾客可能喜欢这么长的窗口期，在此期间他们可以仔细查看打折商品。
But, just as on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, there is an advantage for buyers when they are able to see all offers at once.
但是就像在芝加哥商业交易所一样，如果买家能够同时看到所有报价，这对他们来说是一种优势。
And anecdotally, at least, the prolonged approach to Black Friday quickly becomes exhausting.
而且至少从传闻来看，黑色星期五漫长的预热期很快就会让人筋疲力尽。
Rather than a short frenzy, fuelled by leftover turkey sandwiches and pie, the discount season feels like a never-ending barrage of targeted advertisements and email reminders.
折扣季并不是由没卖完的火鸡三明治和馅饼而引发的短暂狂热，而像是一场没完没了的定向广告和电子邮件提醒的轰炸。
The expansion of Black Friday is not necessarily to the advantage of retailers in aggregate, either.
黑色星期五的延长也不一定对零售商总体有利。
Although there is a benefit to kickstarting a sale before your competitor does, offering discounts six weeks early doubtless means that retailers are giving up full-price purchases.
虽然在竞争对手之前抢先开始促销有好处，但提前六周提供折扣无疑意味着零售商放弃了让顾客全价购买。
This dynamic is even clearer with Christmas sales.
这种动态关系在圣诞节促销中更加明显。
When these actually started on Boxing Day, last-minute present buyers whose demand was surely inelastic (what choice do they have on Christmas Eve?) were forced to pay full price.
当圣诞节促销实际是在节礼日才开始的时候，那些最后一刻才买礼物的人不得不支付全价，因为他们的需求肯定是没有弹性的（他们在平安夜还有什么选择呢？）。（注：平安夜是12月24日，圣诞节是25日，节礼日是26日，人们一般在圣诞节互送礼物，节礼日是给服务业工作者送礼物。）
Now, more often than not, they are able to snag a last-minute deal.
现在（当促销时间延长时），最后一刻买家往往能够在最后一刻买到促销商品。
If each retailer acts out of rational self-interest, and nudges forward their sales a little each year, the collective problem becomes a little worse each season.
如果所有零售商都出于理性和自身利益行事，并且每年都把自己的促销稍微提前一点，那么零售商的集体问题每年都会变得更糟一点。
Even if the majority of consumers and retailers might prefer that holiday sales start on Black Friday and last for a short period, the equilibrium cannot hold.
即使大多数消费者和零售商可能更希望假日促销从黑色星期五开始，并持续较短的时间，这种均衡也无法维持。
This kind of market failure, which economists call “unravelling”, is common in “matching markets”, such as job markets for doctors and lawyers.
这种市场失灵（经济学家称之为“解体”）在“匹配市场”中很常见，例如医生和律师的就业市场。
In his book, “Who gets What—and Why?”, Alvin Roth of Stanford University, who in 2012 shared a Nobel prize for work on matching markets, described how acute the problem once was in the market for clerkships.
斯坦福大学的阿尔文·罗思在他的《谁得到了什么——以及为什么？》中描述了书记员市场的问题曾经有多么严重，罗思曾在2012年因在匹配市场方面的研究而与人共同获得诺贝尔奖。
Although judges in the most prestigious courts were more than happy to wait to see who was the most talented student at Harvard University before offering them a clerkship, there was a strong incentive for judges in slightly less prestigious courts to make earlier offers to students who were very likely to be at the top of their piles, so as to pinch the best.
虽然最负盛名的法院的法官非常乐意先等等看，谁是哈佛大学最有才华的学生，然后再为他们提供书记员职位，但对于稍次一等的法院的法官来说，他们有强烈的动机尽早向那些极有可能名列前茅的学生提供职位，以便抢到最好的学生。
This forced the most prestigious courts to respond.
这迫使最负盛名的法院必须做出回应。
As a consequence, offers crept earlier and earlier. They also “exploded”.
结果是书记员offer（录用通知）给得越来越早，而且还“爆炸”了。
For early offers to work they had to expire.
要想让提前给出去的offer有作用，就必须给这些offer设定有效期。（注：迫使学生尽快接offer，防止优秀学生被其他法院抢走。）
Mr Roth recounted the tale of a student in 2005 who boarded a flight from one interview to another and received an offer from the judge he had just met via voicemail while taxiing.
罗斯讲述了2005年一个学生的故事，这个学生结束一场面试后就乘飞机去赶下一场面试，在飞机起飞滑行时，他通过语音信箱收到了刚刚给他面试的法官给的offer。
By the time he landed the offer had been pulled.
等飞机落地时，给他的offer已经被撤回了。
The flight was just 35 minutes long.
整个飞行过程只有35分钟。
When it comes to clerkships, judges have managed to establish rules about how offers ought to be made, which has helped reduce the scale of the problem.
对于书记员职位，法官们现在已经设法制定了关于如何给offer的规则，这有助于使问题不那么严重。
Alas, no such solution is possible for retailers—clubbing together to decide how best to sell things would understandably be frowned upon by competition regulators.
唉，零售商不可能有这样的解决方案——如果他们联合起来决定如何最好地卖出商品，竞争监管机构肯定会反对这种做法，这是可以理解的。（注：这有垄断和操控市场之嫌。）
By 2035 Black Friday might, therefore, be a summertime affair.
因此到2035年，黑色星期五可能会从夏季就开始了。
