Study Of The Informal Institutions With Evolutionary Game Theory

It is a fact that the informal institutions such as custom, convention and moral have great effects on the political and economic reform in China. Hidden rules are popular and gray areas can be found in every aspect of the society. As a result the informal institutions are challenging the formal institutions to some extent. I think that the study of the development of the informal institutions is of great importance to the economic reform in China.In this thesis the inheritance, evolution of the informal institutions during the economic reform are studied. Based on the recognition of the informal institutions, their effects on the Chinese economy are investigated. In the introduction section, a definition of the informal institutions is presented from the point of view of maneuverability. Using the internal equilibrium of the system, as well as the theory of Aoki Masahiko and Leonid Hurwicz, the informal institutions are modeled and defined as the collection of behaviors of the participants of the evolutionary game contrary to official formal institutions. Then both informal and formal institutions are unified to some extent according to the maneuverability because the effective institutions are these that are actually used in the process of the game and it does not matter whether they are formal or informal.In chapter 1, the studies of the informal institutions are reviewed.These involves economy, sociology and other subjects of social science. It is found that the study of informal institutions in economy is less thorough compared with these in other subjects, and it is beneficial to apply the results in other subjects to the study in economy. Western economists have also done a lot of work in the study of informal institutions. However they share the disadvantages such as unclear definition, limited point of view and limited...