In Nelson and Winter's economic evolution theory, they will describe compete The informal theory of dynamic process in the market distinguishes from the neoclassical orthodox theory. In their view, the evolution in economic behavior will be "routine", rather than the result of "rational choice" or "market natural choice". Their analysis presupposes that, Economic entity The current convention will be relatively rigid over time, so that this kind of conventional behavior can be regarded as "the counterpart of genes in economics". As a result, they believe that evolution is carried out in the direction of convention rather than rationality. Nelson and Winter successively passed the early Set theory model (1964) and later limited Markov chain And the evolution model of computer simulation technology, the core problem that attempts to deal with is: whether to choose a "real" evolution model of dynamics, resulting in Economic entity This equilibrium state of adhering to the orthodox decision-making rules of optimization? They gave a negative answer. They proved that although Economic entity In equilibrium, we must make full use of various factors and resources (as stipulated by orthodox behavior), but economic entities may still Disequilibrium Take irrational behavior. From this, they draw a conclusion that a choice equilibrium may not necessarily correspond to an orthodox market equilibrium However, the choice has been proved to lead to movement in the "orthodox" equilibrium direction. In their conclusion, they pointed out that the selective equilibrium in the evolutionary process would not lead a subject in orthodox equilibrium at the beginning to move towards a new orthodox equilibrium through the orthodox motivation of rational maximization when facing environmental changes; On the contrary, this process is more likely to be realized in the direction of "following the convention and adapting to environmental changes". Therefore, in essence, Nelson and Winter's economic evolution theory does not completely disprove the neoclassical Natural Selection Theory ； On the contrary, it unexpectedly confirmed that Neoclassical economics Natural selection theory. It should be emphasized that they reached this conclusion through the investigation of the evolution of the economic process, which is obviously different from the orthodox theory turning to natural selection under the greatest embarrassment of rationality. The paradigm features of Nelson and Winter's economic evolution theory are mainly reflected in their emphasis on and thorough investigation of the role of "convention" in the process of economic evolution. This feature is the main reason why I put them into the institutional analysis paradigm of "from formalizing Hayek to reviving Van Buren" in this section. In Nelson and Winter's evolutionary theory of process selection, they are“ Economic entity The term "organizational form" is used in the sense of "decision rules and procedural models followed", which is different from "neoclassical enterprise theory and enterprise contract theory There are obvious differences in the concept of organizational form of ". In the subsequent analysis, they further replaced "organizational form" with "convention". In Nelson and Winter's view, convention is Economic entity In other words, it is "the economic counterpart of genes". On this premise, they further“ Economic entity Behavior is a kind of behavior dominated by rules "has risen to the height of the 'first principle' of evolutionary theory. They believe that the convention Economic entity The role played in behavior is similar to that played by genes in biological evolution; Using convention to explain the stability of economic subjects' behavior and providing the external conditions on which "natural selection" takes place in the economic process will be like genes in Natural Selection Theory It has explanatory power as in. Based on this idea, they put forward the proposition of "organizational genetics" in evolutionary theory. They believe that "the knowledge of conventions is the core of understanding behavior. Modeling an enterprise means modeling conventions and how they change over time" (1982:128). The core hypothesis of Nelson and Winter's histogenetics is that enterprises automatically follow fixed conventions to a large extent. In their view, the core function of the routinized behavior within the organization is to help form stable expectations and promote the storage and dissemination of specific knowledge within the organization. (1982:99) In addition, Nelson and Winter also pointed out that conventions are rigid (inert) and have their own vitality. The function of convention for the storage of productive and technical knowledge within an organization (organizational memory) cannot be restored to the effective memory of its individual members. Nelson and Winter introduced convention into the economic process Evolutionary analysis To some extent, the root cause of the specific continuity and stability of economic behavior has been found. They made people realize that convention is a kind of thing similar to gene, which provides stable heritable material for "natural selection" to play a role in economic process. They passed the Economic entity The analogy with organism reveals that "convention itself originates from the spontaneous evolution process and influences the evolution direction through the constraint of behavior". In general, Nelson and Winter's "convention", "evolutionary process", "rule constraints of behavior choice" and other issues in the economic evolution theory are not only amendments to the neoclassical orthodox theoretical analysis, but also a return of the institutional analysis paradigm from neoclassical to Hayek and Van Buren's institutional analysis.
