格雷夫论制度变迁的产生.pdf

How Do Self-enforcing Institutions Endogenously Change? Institutional Reinforcement and Quasi-Parameters 1 Avner Greif Stanford University July 2001 Preliminary and Incomplete Based on Chapter 7 in Historical Institutional Analysis. Forthcoming CUP. Abstract Why and how does an institution influence its rate of change? How does an institution influence its ability to persist in a changing environment and how does it lead to its own demise? These questions frustrate the study of self-enforcing institutions in which each decision-maker’s behavior is motivated by the behavior and expected behavior of the other decision-makers. Hence, such institutions are studied through the lens provided by game theory. But if an institution is equated with a game-theoretic equilibrium - a stationary state - how does it influence its rate of change? This paper addresses this question, particularly by developing the concepts of institutional reinforcement and quasi-parameters. Reinforcement (undermining) is a process through which an institution’s implications alter quasi-parameters, thereby increasing (decreasing) the range of situations in which the behavior associated with that institution is self- enforcing. Reinforcing and undermining processes thereby influence whether an institution will or will not remain self-enforcing following a particular environmental change. Furthermore, undermining can lead an institution to no longer be self-enforcing even in the absence of an environm