Complex Institutions as Information-Processing Systems

对复杂适应系统的现代研究提供了一种方法，能够在单一的分析框架内提供不同人类机构--政治、经济和社会--之间的比较。本研究探讨了基于复杂适应系统中信息处理的基本假设来开发和检验正式机构的理论模型的可能性。研究人员测试了将人类正式机构--特别是政治和经济机构--视为复杂的信息处理系统的推论。假设正式的人类机构由有限理性的决策者和一套构建行为者任务环境的规则组成，调查者从各种政治和经济机构推导出一组影响并测试这些影响对结果分布的影响。对结果分布的关注允许以简约的方式比较不同的机构。调查员收集了以下方面的数据：市场(道琼斯工业平均指数的每日回报)、议程进程(报纸对政治事件的报道和国会听证会的安排)、选举(县级总统选举结果)、政策结果(美国政府通过的法规)和预算结果(美国国会预算结果；州和地方财政)。需要资金来获取更多的数据，扩展现有的数据集，并对结果分布进行比较分布分析。这项研究产生的数据集将对其他对机构分析感兴趣的学者产生巨大的兴趣和价值。

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.