Basic methods of institutional analysis

The analysis method of institutionalism focuses on peace and sustainable development, and is committed to promoting public policies based on individual freedom, civil rights, market economy, public economy, autonomous governance, limited government, constitutional rule of law and democratic system. To sum up, it takes classical liberalism as the value, public * * * choice and system analysis as the logic, and political reform as the core to discuss specific public * * * management, public * * * service and public * * * policy issues under the development background of China. Specific institutional preferences are individual freedom, civil rights, market economy, public economy, autonomous governance, limited government, constitutional rule of law and democratic system. It is believed that the basic source of sustainable development lies in more personal freedom, more appropriate civil rights, developed market economy and public economy, and an appropriate institutional platform composed of autonomous governance, limited government, constitutional rule of law and democratic system.

Generally speaking, the characteristics of institutional analysis methods mainly include:

1, dynamic characteristics

That is, looking at the economic world from the perspective of evolution or evolution is a prominent feature of institutional analysis methods. Its essence is to examine human economic behavior from a dynamic and ever-changing perspective in the biological sense. This situation began with Van Buren, the originator of institutional economists. From the very beginning, he clearly put the analysis of the system into the framework of economic research, and paid more attention to the institutional factors that led to the change of economic system and the direction of institutional change [1](P264). The method of institutional analysis pays special attention to the evolution of institutions, and holds that the real driving force for institutional evolution is technological change or technological initiative, and that there is an interactive relationship between technological change and economic policy. Therefore, this research method shows that the formulation of specific economic policies must be based on a full understanding of technology and its changes. At the same time, it shows that all kinds of problems in economic development are formed in the process of institutional evolution, so to solve these problems, we must find the real reasons in the dynamic process of institutional evolution.

2. The characteristics of "non-pure economic analysis"

Western orthodox economists always assume that systems are built in their methods. Because of the simplification of economic activities, economic theories are always used to investigating economic phenomena within the scope of economic system and only studying the relationship between economic variables, so their concern about economic behavior is how people use limited resources for production, and the basic problems of economic analysis are production, effective organization and wealth distribution. However, the institutional analysis method always adheres to the belief that social economy is a whole system, everything in the economic system is interrelated and interdependent, and everything is the cause of other things. In this way, after one of all endogenous conditions changes, other conditions will also change, and this series of changes will make the whole economic system move in a certain direction. Because the institutional analysis method adheres to this belief, it pays attention to the whole economic system. When studying economic problems, we should consider both those "economic factors" and those "non-economic factors", and bring those non-economic factors such as law, politics and social ideology into the endogenous variables of economic research.

3. The collectivism of methodology.

From the perspective of the methodology history of economics, there are two ways for economics to analyze human behavior; First, individualism of methodology; The second is the collectivism of methodology, which they think is the most effective society. Orthodox economics is based on methodological individualism, while institutional economics has a strong color of methodological collectivism. What they care about is not the behavior of individuals or enterprises, but the result of collective action of the system or the control and constraint of collective action on individual choice. "Therefore, institutional economists tend to avoid methodological individualism and avoid problem-solving research in models that lack institutional embodiment and emphasize equilibrium, optimality and pure market." [2](P932) So Kang Mangsi, a master of institutional economics, defined "institution" as "the logic of collective control of individual actions." They believe that the investigation and description of systematic collective action can best understand individual economic behavior.

4. Specific characteristics

Institutional economists have specific characteristics in their research methods. What they pay attention to is the microeconomic system, which is more analyzed from the phenomenon and form. Therefore, its theoretical core always revolves around the specific institutional categories such as the connotation and composition of the system, institutional change and innovation, property rights system and national theory. In the analysis of the connotation and composition of the system, we use "institutional arrangement" to concretize the connotation of the system, and think that institutional arrangement is a set of behavior rules that constrain specific economic behaviors and relationships. In the study of institutional change, it specifically involves the cost and benefit analysis of institutional change. In the research of property right system, the origin, function and evolution of property right system are analyzed with specific property right system as a typical example.