Complex Institutions as Information-Processing Systems

作为信息处理系统的复杂机构

• 批准号: 9904700
• 负责人: Bryan Jones
• 金额: $ 8.71万
• 依托单位: University of Washington
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1999
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1999-09-15 至 2002-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9904700&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Complex; Institutions; Information; Processing; Systems

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.

对复杂自适应系统的现代研究提供了一种能够在单个分析框架内提供各种人类机构的方法 - 政治，经济和社会 - 。 这项研究调查探讨了基于复杂自适应系统中信息处理的基本假设来开发和测试正式机构的理论模型的可能性。 研究者通过将人类正式机构（特别是政治和经济机构）视为复杂的信息处理系统来测试推论。 假设正式的人类机构由有限理性的决策者和一系列构建参与者的任务环境的规则，那么研究人员会引起一系列含义，并测试了这些含义对各种政治和经济机构的结果分布的含义。结果对结果的关注允许结果分布的比较，以示例性的方式比较多元化机构。 调查人员汇编了有关市场的数据（道琼斯工业平均水平的每日回报），议程程序（报纸对政治事件的报道和国会听证会的安排），选举（县级总统选举申报表），政策成果，美国政府通过的法规（美国政府通过的法规）以及预算的预算和本地预算和本地预算； 要求资金获取其他数据，扩展现有数据集并进行结果分布的比较分配分析。这项研究生成的数据集将对对机构分析感兴趣的其他学者产生极大的兴趣和价值。