另类教规：如何另类？能否另类？——演化发展经济学的全球化理论及其可行性

针对西方主流经济学无法对世界各国贫富差距扩大给予充分解释的问题，演化发展经济学提出了源于重商主义、针对生产领域的另类教规理论，并给出了相应的政策建议。本文对演化发展经济学的全球化理论进行了评述，指出了其中可供借鉴的独特分析视角和有价值的结论，并就其政策建议的可行性与局限性进行了分析。     

重构经济发展理论的"另类教规经济学"——评《穷国的国富论》

由贾根良教授参与编选并主持翻译的《穷国的国富论:演化发展经济学论文选》是在埃里克·S.赖纳特教授主持的"另类教规基金会"基础上系列研究的主要成果,它基本上刻画了"另类教规"所理解的经济学的基本观点.鉴于该思想对落后国家的不发达问题和赶超问题的深刻洞见,因而它对目前仍相对落后的中国来说具有极为深远的意义.     

解读演化经济学的兴起——兼论演化经济学的现状与未来发展

演化经济学的兴起主要有三个原因:西方主流经济学的范式危机;自然科学的发展;社会科学领域演化思想的积累与发展.演化经济学最近的前沿研究集中于进行演化建模,对复杂性进行测量,讨论技术与制度的协同演化等几个方面.拓展对多时期动态过程的研究,将演化经济学与制度经济学、马克思主义经济学、博弈理论等进行创造性综合,更多关注学科语言的凝炼和理论建模工作是演化经济学的未来发展方向.     

演化经济学在环境问题研究领域的新进展

近年来,依据古典、静态的传统经济学理论而制定的环境经济政策没有从根本上解决环境污染问题,而演化经济学采用生物学类比的研究范式,强调事物发展的动态性,以多样性、变革或创新、有限理性、选择环境、路径依赖和合作演进为研究内核,对环境问题进行的系列研究更具有说服力,演化经济学视角下的环境经济理论认为,环境经济政策的建立是一个渐进、持续、动态的演化过程。文章在对环境问题传统经济学观点简单回顾基础之上,对演化经济视角下的资源、环境问题进行了研究。     

演化经济学方法论与演化博弈论的比较研究

方法论是构建理论的基本指导原则。近年来,一方面,演化博弈论的研究以及演化博弈论在经济学的应用成为国外学术界热门的研究领域,演化博弈论也成为经济学的前沿方法论;另一方面,演化经济学的发展正成燎原之势,甚至成为一个非常流行的标签,许多经济学分支和流派都声称其方法是"演化的"。这导致一些学者将演化经济学方法论与演化博弈论相混淆。其实两者存在根本性的差异,两者的对立更具有悠久的历史渊源。本文以演化经济学的立场,对演化经济学方法论与演化博弈论进行了比较。     

基于演化发展经济学理论的二三产业协调发展探析

自称“替代性教规”的演化发展经济学从生产和创新的角度出发,提出了与“主流教规”迥异的发展中国家摆脱贫困、实现经济增长和赶超的一系列理论和观点.这些理论对发展中国家的经济社会发展具有重要的指导性.我国经济正处于调整产业结构、转变增长方式的重要时期,产业结构优化升级取得了一定成效,但对第二、三产业发展的认识也出现了一些误区.本文从演化发展经济学的角度,对我国现阶段二三产业的关系及协调发展问题提出一些看法和建议.     

演化经济学的演化与企业技术创新分析的新思路

演化经济学是近几年兴起的经济学流派。其基本特征就是运用演化分析方法研究动态经济过程。它借鉴生物进化的思想和自然科学多领域的研究成果,将技术变迁和创新看作经济发展的根本力量,以动态的、演化的理念来分析和理解经济系统的运行和发展。目前,演化经济学已日益得到经济学界广泛的重视,并对其他学科的发展产生了深远的影响。本文回顾了演化经济学的产生、发展及其主要的理论,并分析了演化经济学的产生对企业技术创新发展的影响。     

经济学中的演化计算方法

经济学中的演化计算包括起源于20世纪40年代的元胞自动机、50年代的系统动力学、80年代的演化经济学、90年代的复杂自适应系统以及复杂网络研究方法。从这些流派的共性来看,经济学中的狭义演化计算应当是以计算模拟为基础,以微观个体为出发点或微观规律为出发点,以研究复杂经济系统的整体演化过程或结局为目的的方法。经济学中的演化计算实现了经济学和数学、计算机科学、管理学、社会科学以及生物学等学科的融合。演化计算方法抛弃了传统经济学中的严格的理性假设,并且从方法论层面上否定了传统的还原论方法。经济学中的演化计算方法在以下几个方面是理论上的重点或热点:新的演化计算理论和工具的出现、复杂网络理论中的计算复杂性分析与快速算法的实现、演化机制的不断探讨以及它和正统经济学在方法论层面的不断比较。     

战略管理理论演变:基于企业理论视角的回顾

1980年之前,战略管理实践和新古典经济学企业理论研究彼此独立进行着。1980年以来,随着传统产业经济学、组织经济学、资源基础观、顾客价值基础观、演化经济学等企业理论的引入,战略管理思维起点在空间上呈现出"内部—外部—匹配"的钟摆式摇摆,在时间上呈现出由静态到动态的演变,研究主题涵盖了从战略形成、实施到评价的各个方面。从企业理论视角对上述演变过程进行了简要梳理,提出了以演化经济学企业理论为主导的整合研究思路。     

均衡与演化——对经济学发展方向的思考

经济学研究中的均衡主义与演化主义历来存在争论.本文在对经济均衡主义和演化主义的形成、内容及特征详细分析的基础上,对经济学体系的发展状况进行了初步的检讨.本文认为,对均衡主义与演化主义在一个更为一般的框架内进行整合和创造性发展,具有重大的理论价值.     

习俗元制度的演化机制:一个演化经济学的视角

演化经济学为我们分析制度演化提供了新的视角,演化经济学关于制度的演化机制主要有遗传机制(复制机制)、变异机制(新奇创生机制)、选择机制和适应性学习机制等.习俗就是最基本的元制度之一,作为一种基本的元制度,是市场经济运行的基础,从演化经济学的视角来看,习俗元制度的演化机制至少有:遗传机制(复制机制)、变异机制(新奇创生机制)、选择机制和适用性学习机制.     

The Nature of the State and the State of Nature: a Comment on Grady & McGuire's Paper

In 'The Nature of Constitutions', Mark Grady & Michael McGuire provide a model of the evolution and purposes of constitutions as arising to minimize appropriation by dominants of subordinates. This Comment builds on Grady & McGuire's article in three ways. First, it supplements their analysis by operationalizing a model of constitutional evolution that views constitutions as arising out of the conflict of competing high-ranking individuals to preserve their own authority. From this clash of self-interest of dominant individuals, constitutions are born. This predicts that constitutions will not simply tame all forms of appropriation, but will also hard-wire some forms of appropriation behavior into the permanent constitutional structure. Second, it examines the American constitution in light of this model to show how that constitution reflects the mixture of appropriation and appropriation-taming behavior. Third, this Comment argues that the breakdown of constitutionalism in the United States this century can be explained by a failure to fully appreciate the purposes of constitutionalism in a biological framework.     

A Proposed Methodological Synthesis of Post-Keynesian and Institutional Economics

Post-Keynesian and institutionalist writers have commented on the theoretical and conceptual commonalities between the two schools. Some have suggested a theoretical synthesis based on these commonalities. In spite of these theoretical and conceptual commonalities each tradition has developed significantly different methods of analysis. Instead of theoretical or conceptual synthesis we seek here to present a methodological synthesis.

Institutionalist methods have yielded "plausible" explanations, but these have been too "vague and suggestive" to be consistently used for economic policy. Post-Keynesian methods have policy necessary "rigor," but the similarity to neoclassical methods has exposed post-Keynesian theories to unwarranted synthesis with incompatible traditions.

This essay presents a synthesis of post-Keynesian and institutionalist methodology, one of "plausible rigor," combining elements of "institutional dynamics" with a heuristic framework based on John Dewey's "instrumental logic," and proposes that the resulting approach overcomes weaknesses in the methods of analysis of both schools.     

The Legal-Economic Nexus from the Perspective of New Institutional Economists and Original Institutional Economists

There are two institutional economics approaches to law and economics. New institutional economists prescribe that arbitrators foster efficiency in setting economic disputes and original institutional economists focus on creating reasonable values – that is, balancing efficiency and justice. Disequilibrium between desired efficiency and perceived fairness triggers agency and is a source of coevolution of law and economics.     

The 2016 Veblen-Commons Award Recipient: Daniel W. Bromley: Institutional Economics

Institutional economics remains impaired by a lack of agreement as to the meaning of the concept “institution.” At the practical level, this conceptual muddle prevents progress in the crucial task of helping problematic states in Africa, parts of South Asia, and the Middle East. Thousands of refugees seeking to enter Europe are a reminder of the tragic consequences of dysfunctional states. Standard international development programs — emphasizing economic growth and fighting poverty — are counter-productive because they fail to address the underlying institutional incoherence in fragile states. They are flawed because they focus on symptoms rather than reasons. A focus on the reasons for current dysfunctional states would bring attention to the defective institutional architecture — legal relations — that prevents the emergence of economic coherence where dysfunction now reigns. We must help countries craft economic institutions that will improve livelihoods. But conceptual coherence about institutions must first emerge from the academy.     

Evolution-Based Approaches in Economics and Evolutionary Loss of Information

Evolutionary economics provides a self-organizing, stabilizing mechanism without relying on mechanic equilibria. However, there are substantial differences between the genetic evolutionary biology and the evolution of institutions, firms, routines, or strategies in economics. Most importantly, there is no genetic codification and no sexual reproduction in economic evolution, and the involved agents can interfere consciously and purposefully. This entails a general lack of fixation and a quick loss of information through a Muller’s ratchet-like mechanism. The present contribution discusses the analogy of evolution in biology and economics, and considers potential problems resulting in evolutionary models in economics.     

The Rate of Change in Evolutionary Systems and Evolutionary Economic Modeling

Evolutionary economics seeks to model socio-economic reality as an evolutionary system. This powerful approach entails the implication of the continuous loss of information through the evolutionary process. The implication corresponds to evolutionary biology, although the systems in evolutionary economics are different from those in evolutionary biology. The issue of the loss of information has not been extensively studied in economics. Many open questions remain: Which knowledge is lost under what circumstances? Can loss of information be harmful to the socio-economic system as a whole in the presence of runaway dynamics caused by, for example, network externalities? How can the development of knowledge in economic systems be studied? The present article examines these questions and more.     

Towards a non-Darwinian Theory of Institutional Change

The paper emphasizes two flaws in mainstream economics: the failure to understand actual human behavior in many real contexts and the failure to take account of transaction costs. By emphasizing the role of knowledge, institutions, transaction costs and path dependence, new institutional economics has provided a powerful answer to these shortcomings. Nevertheless, a number of questions remain open. In particular, path dependence is far from being a continuous process. Its dynamics and its irregularities are by and large unexplained. Hence, a strong need for a convincing evolutionary theory of environmental change. This article does not deny the validity of the Darwinian view applied to the theory of the firm and of competition in a free-market economy. The paper, however, maintains that the natural-selection process that characterizes the Darwinian approach is ill suited to describe economic evolutionary processes. It is shown that a combination of functional analysis and natural selection may indeed be a better solution, for it solves some of the puzzles raised by public choice theory without violating the fundamental tenets of the new institutional economics approach. Still, although this combined view may well explain why the institutional features are retained by the system, it does not clarify why they are introduced in the first place. A third possibility is put forward in the second part of the paper, where a new evolutionary theory is suggested. Within this framework, agents are assumed to behave according to their preferences within the existing rules of the game. At the same time, new ideas and sometimes new ideologies may influence their behavioral patterns. The combination between needs and ideologies generates environmental change, especially if so-called ideological entrepreneurs are able to transform latent and shared beliefs into an institutional project and enforce it.     

Promotion and Coevolutionary Dynamics in Contemporary Capitalism

We characterize the dynamics of contemporary capitalist societies as emerging from the coevolution of five different subsystems: the intimate realm of individuals, the market, the state, civil society, and nature. We highlight a specific coevolution mechanism between some of these subsystems, which we call promotion. The insights from this coevolution approach are twofold. On one hand, from the ontological and heuristic perspectives, we argue that our proposal opens the possibility for constructing a general, interpretative framework in evolutionary economics. On the other hand, from a theoretical-explanatory perspective, we detect certain coevolution paths that may engender global pathologies in capitalist societies. We also suggest that future research may explore some normative implications of this approach, as well as alternative methodological strategies to develop it.     

Countering the Power of Vested Interests: Advancing Rationality in Public Decision-Making

Seemingly Pareto-improving reforms face more opposition than they should. In earlier work, I presented an explanation: voters correctly saw reforms as part of a long-term dynamic game, and they correctly saw how the reform affected outcomes (e.g., by affecting beliefs or coalition formation). Recent advances in behavioral economics derived from insights from sociology emphasize preference endogeneity, noting that beliefs are affected by those of others with whom one identifies and need not be consistent with rationality, as conventionally defined. Thus, individuals may have beliefs about the economic system that differ from those of economists. People may support policies which economists’ analyses suggest are contrary to their interests because they believe these policies advance their interests. Based on previous analyses of the causes of these seeming perversities, I show how economists can modify policy proposals in ways that enhance likelihood of support, e.g., with contingent provisions which are operative in the states of the world that economists know (believe) are unlikely to occur, but which enhance the wellbeing of individuals with such beliefs in those states. Those selling products that are adverse to one’s health have learned how to persuade customers to buy them. Likewise, politicians who are selling policies that are adverse to society’s wellbeing have learned how to market their ideas. Economists will similarly have to learn how to persuade citizens of the desirability of the evidence- and theory-based policies that they advocate.