Financial Innovation In The Perspective Of Evolutionary Economics

As the core of modern market economy, finance plays a key role in the national economy. Now, the financial innovation industry, with its power in reducing the transaction costs, improving the financial efficiency and effective distribution of financial resources, shows great impetus and constitutes as an important contributing factor as technical innovation in economic growth.Since the 1980s, with the ever-increasing process of financial liberalization, the fast development of information technology and the rise of new markets, financial globalization shows an unconvertible trend for both the developed and the developing countries. In this background, financial innovation has swept the financial industry in western countries with the unprecedented scale and initiated the "revolution in financial services". Consequently, in different degrees, an essential change has taken place in the financial market, the financial system and the financial functional mechanism, which has exerted significant impact on the economy and society of different regions, countries and even all the world.With the setup and operation of the socialist economic and financial system, especially with the further deepening of the open-up policy in China and the financial globalization, the domestic financial innovation is very active. At the same time, the foreign financial innovation is providing increasing impacts on our country. The financial innovation will exert profound effects on the reform and administration of the Chinese financial system. After attending WTO, the Chinese financial innovation will develop even in a faster speed, so it has become very urgent to fully understand financial innovation and the financial innovation process, and to carry out comprehensive and systemic research in the field. Considering the fact that China has been a member of WTO and the financial globalization is on the process, this research is of both theoretical and practical significance.Facing the large-scale and comprehensive activities of innovation in the domain of finance, the western scholars, applying Joseph Schumpeter's conception and viewpoint of innovation, put forward the concept of financial innovation, and stated their opinions on the reason, the effect and the countermeasure of financial innovation. From the available western literatures, most of them adopted the basic principles of Neo-Classic Economics, utilizing a standard analytic framework of supply and demand to discuss the motive of a single bank or other financial institutions developing new products or adopting new technique and system, or the reason of financial innovation. Their researches are focused on the reason and effect of the existing financial innovation. Commonly they simply ascribed the reason of financial innovation to supervision, competition, the appearance of new technique and the change of macro-economic environments. Most of the existing researches always considered the subject of financial innovation as passive in the process of innovation, i.e., they advanced product or system innovation because the change of environment aroused in the financial institutions a change in the feeling of risk. Most of them only studied a certain aspect of financial innovation, so they go less far andare less systemic in the study of financial innovation compared with the study of other financial theories.In our country, researches about financial innovation started in the middle of the 1980s, and the research mainly consists of the introduction of and comment on the new financial innovation theories > financial derivatives > financial market and the innovation of financial organization in the western countries. In general, increasing Chinese researches are involved in the study of financial innovation, but more of them are on the introduction of the practice of financial innovation than on the generalization of the intensive history of financial innovation; more of them are on accounting for the reasons for the development of the financial innovation than on the progress of financial innovation and its spreading; more of them are on the study of macroscopic effect of the financial innovation than on the interactive mechanism of microscopic and macroscopic factors; more of them are on the introduction of the western theory of financial innovation than on the discussion of the way and countermeasure that China should do about the financial innovation. Researches of financial innovation need systematization and integration.In the past 20 years, both the domestic and the international financial markets had changed remarkably, and financial innovation presented an explosive increase. It has been a common task both in theory and in practice to deeply analyze the financial innovative activities, to seek the commonness and to discover the inherent lawsIn any section of modern economy, innovation is of vital significance. The standard micro economy theory focuses mainly on the distribution of static resources and economy efficiency, but as time goes, it proves that the dynamic factors like innovation provides a greater impetus in economic development. And the function of financial innovation is to be stressed considering the vital function of finance in modern economy and its contribution to economic growth. The financial innovation theories currently available are based on the standard mainstream economics, adopting the standard supply-dommand analysis as the analytic tool. The methodological foundation of mainstream western economics, mainly based on the theories of Bacon, Desecrate and Newton and on the world view of mechanism and dynamism with quantity, restoration and balance the core, can not provide effective explanation for the financial innovation.The financial innovation theories, which are based on the traditional economics with atomism and mechanism the main foundation, cannot analyze the complexity and spontaneity of financial innovation, and it also fails to account for the irreversibility and environmental choices of innovation process. Considering the limitation of traditional economics in the explanation and analysis of financial innovation, the financial innovation theories are faced with great challenge.The evolutionary economics takes as the study object a with-time changing variation or system, the variation of which shows stochastic and disturbing features as well as the regularity shown by the choice mechanism of the system. Now, evolution economics has been accepted and absorbed by many schools of economics, and is successfully applied in the analysis of industrial organization, technicalinnovation, market mechanism and system.The evolutionary economics holds that the resource distribution through cooperation in the given mechanism of neo-classical economics is only a necessary condition of economic change, and that the variations of the basic assumptions in neo-classical economics, including the formation of new preference, the innovation of technology and system and the creation of new resources, are the key contributing factors of economic change. The formation of new preference, the innovation of technology and system and the creation of new resources are the birth of novelty, which is the discovery of new possibilities and the result of human creation. If the new possibilities are adopted, it constitutes innovation. What differentiates evolutionary economics from the classic economic theories is its focus on innovation and the admission of the key role of novelty in inducing economic change. Evolutionary economics has opened new insights into the study of financial innovation.Considering the complex relations within the innovation subjects, between the innovation subjects and between the subjects and the innovating environments, the impact of innovation results from the unpredictable factors in economic activities. Financial innovation is a complex activity carried out in multi dimensions, which makes the complex dynamic process of innovative evolution difficult to account for in the current financial innovation theories. And it is in this point that the self-organization evolution theory provides a helpful research tool. Financial innovation is the total of the novelty-induced activities which are determined by the essence of financial institutions and controlled by the financial institutions, and it is also the response to the outside environmental stimuli. So basically speaking, it is a process of self-organization and the result of adaptation to the social economic development. The financial enterprise is a non-linear system in pursuit if profit, which provides its innovation activities with features like saturation, malfunction, deviation and leaping. The evolution of financial innovation undergoes a process of self-adjustment, self-perfection and self-development. In the process, there shows a trend from the low grade to the advanced grade, and from disorder to order, resulting a continual enhancement in structure and function. The self-organization mechanism is insulated in all the elements of the financial innovation system and all the behaviors of the system. Like an invisible baton inside, it controls the variation and development of the financial system. In the self-organization evolution of financial innovation, openness and imbalance are the premise, the rise and fall inside are the inducement, and separation and environmental choice are the evolutionary process.Financial institution is the rules formed in the long time association of human beings, and the forming process is one of dynamic game, and one of innovation. Evolutionary Game Theory is the combining results of evolutionary ideas and game theory. Game theory has been a basic analytic tool in the analysis of modern economic phenomena, and accordingly, evolutionary game theory as an important analytic tool in evolutionary economics can be very effective in accounting for the innovation process of financial institution.The potential economic profit of a financial innovation can only be put into full play by diffusion. The diffusion of financial innovation is the spatial spreading, transferring and application of the innovation, and it is a process of absorption, an active economic activity in which the potential adopters carry out evaluation, selection, introduction and digestion. The diffusion is a transferring process from the subjects of financial innovation to the potential adopters, and it is a re-realization of the financial innovation besides the innovation subjects in a certain channels. The diffusion process involves various dynamic and flexible elements and the complex non-linear relations of interaction and feedback between the diffusion system and the diffusion environments. Considering the above features of financial diffusion, this dissertation provides several chiastic models to describe the diffusion process of financial innovation, including the chiastic model of financial product diffusion set up in accordance with the features of the products, and the chiastic model of the diffusion of financial business circulation.Financial innovation in China is practiced in the background of economy and finance reform. By now, for both the achievements we have achieved and the loses we have suffered, most of the innovation is prompted by the government instead of the market. So the innovation is mainly absorbed from the foreign countries, showing a lack of self-initiated innovation and balanced pattern. Generally speaking, because of the inadequate motivation from inside the micro-financial subjects and inadequate stimuli from the outside environments, the financial innovation activities in China are featured by a lack of systemic arrangements and coordination, and they are mainly the results of the government's intervention, rather than the natural evolutionary results of the market. So it falls behind the development of the market economy. In the time to come, the financial innovation in China should attach importance to the consolidation of the status of the financial enterprises and the weakening of the role of government in the initiation of financial innovation, and, by paying attention to the systemic and coordinating requirements, the relation between the financial supervision and innovation should be properly dealt with...