I am coming late to this party, but wanted to mention Robert Sugden's
work on this topic, in The Economics of Rights, Cooperation and
Welfare (1986), a brilliant book. He uses evolutionary game theory
to, ahem, rationally reconstruct Hume and Hayek. One thing that I
have concluded is that spontaneous order, for better or worse, is
less likely the more rational we are. What I mean is this. Take a
standard coordination game. In classical game theory, none of the
multiple equilibria stands out, so rational players, who recognize
that they are interacting with other rational players, have no idea
what to do. But if we make them simply trial and error rational,
gravitating towards what seems to have led to success in the past, or
if we make them strategically hard-wired, as in EGT, we get
convergence to one of the equilibria - not necessarily the most
efficient one - and hence spontaneous order. To achieve order among
rational players, whose rationality is common knowledge, on the other
hand, requires explicit coordination. Notice that doing what seems
salient or what is conventional is not rational in the sense I mean.
Rational players ought to do what is salient if they believe others
will, and what is not salient etc etc: the indeterminacy goes all the
way down, as it were.
Kevin Quinn
|