Complex Institutions as Information-Processing Systems

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Modern research on complex adaptive systems offers an approach capable of providing comparisons among various human institutions - - political, economic, and social - - within a single analytic framework. This research investigation explores the possibility of developing and testing theoretical models of formal institutions based on the fundamental assumptions of information processing in complex adaptive systems. The investigator tests inferences from viewing human formal institutions - - specifically political and economic institutions - - as complex information processing systems. Assuming that formal human institutions are comprised of boundedly rational decision-makers and a set of rules that structure the task environment of actors, the investigator derives a set of implications and tests these implications on outcome distributions from a variety of political and economic institutions.The focus on outcome distributions allows the comparison of diverse institutions in a parsimonious manner. The investigator assembles data on markets (the daily returns of the Dow Jones Industrial Average), agenda processes (newspaper coverage of political events and the scheduling of Congressional hearings), elections (county-level presidential election returns), policy outcomes (statutes passed by the U. S. government), and budgetary outcomes (U.S. Congressional budgetary outcomes; state and local finances). Funds are requested to acquire additional data, extend existing data sets, and conduct comparative distributional analyses of outcome distributions.The data set generated by this research will be of immense interest and value to other scholars interested in institutional analysis.