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Top1. Introduction
Evolutionary game theory, as a frontier issue of game theory, has been developed by leaps and bounds since the pioneering research of Smith and Price (1973). Evolutionary game theory integrates the ideas of rational economics and evolutionary biology, and no longer models people as super-rational game parties. Currently, evolutionary games are used to study economic evolution, institutional evolution, and other social sciences such as social biological theory. appear. In recent years, various domestic professional magazines and major professional newspapers have published a large number of papers on evolutionary game theory (Adrienne, 2020; Augusto et al. 2021; Céline and Pascale 2020). Especially in the field of institutional change, evolutionary game theory has its own unique analysis characteristics, but it is not a magic weapon for winning. For this reason, the author believes that the use of evolutionary game methods to analyze the theory of institutional change must pay attention to its applicability.
Institutional change is the process of system substitution, transformation, and transaction. This is a dynamic and realistic process. In this process, the main body of the system change, the driving force of the system change, and the factors of the system change are involved. The methods and efficiency evaluation of institutional change are the main research content of the current institutional change theory. As the builder of the theory of institutional change, North summarized the causes and subjects of institutional change, constructed an institutional change model, and incorporated the analysis of institutional change issues into the mainstream economic paradigm. Hayek conducted a more in-depth study on the causes of institutional changes and the coordination of institutions, and believed that institutional changes originated from the competition and cooperation between internal rules and external rules (organizations). Masahiko Aoki and Schott used evolutionary game theory to study institutional change, and they injected fresh vitality into the study of institutional change. Looking at the research results of the theory of institutional change, we can find that there are roughly three methods for the research of institutional change: historical analysis, evolutionary game analysis, and evolutionary economic analysis (Douglas and Silvinha, V., 2020; Fang et al. 2020).
The early advocate of the historical analysis method of institutional change theory was Karl Marx. In his masterpiece “Das Kapital”, Marx gave the historical time series of institutional change-the historical inevitability of the transition from capitalism to communism- -And use this method to analyze the evolution process of social systems in history. North pointed out in “The Rise of the Western World” that effective organization is the key to the rise of Western society. The rise of the Western society is due to its ability to establish effective organizations in the development of history, and the corresponding decline of the East is precisely its inability to develop effective organizational structures in the development of history (Fathalla et al. 2020; Huang et al. 2020). The change in the endowment of factors in the development of society is the key to the change in the social system. North analyzed the changes in the endowment of factors in Europe in the 13th and 17th centuries—mainly changes in population—and the contribution to the evolution of European social systems. The motivation of the system change, North's “Structure and Change in Economic History” summarized, summarized and applied this thought, and adopted the historical analysis method of system change.