Yukihiko Funaki * Doctor of Science , Tokyo Institute of Technology * "The Core and Consistency Properties: A General Characterization" (with T. Yamato), International Game Theory Review, 2001 Human society today is both given meaning and constrained by a variety of different institutions. Our everyday economic activities would lose their feasibility without recourse to the legal enforcement of ownership and property rights. Moreover, regardless of how little interest they may take in politics, people in modern society simply could not live in a world without political institutions. The Theory Team faces the task of identifying the mechanisms that generate political-economic institutions in the modern world. How are these institutions established? How are they maintained? How do they change? To provide answers to questions such as these, we are developing a new approach -- the GLOPE Method -- intended to unite such diverse methods as deductive modeling, case studies, surveys, experimental games, and simulation techniques into an organic whole while building upon the existing body of research into institutions. This approach represents an attempt to provide a theoretical framework for the construction of open political-economic systems at a time of expanding globalization. Project 1: Political-Economic Experiments This project will attempt, to verify through the methods of experimental economics the ways in which fixed sets of rules give rise to different types of political-economic activities, and to identify through the use of game theory and other methods what particular activities result in stable conventions and institutions. In other words, the aim is to determine though experimentation whether an empirical basis can be provided for the deductive conclusions drawn from the modeling process, thereby effecting a meaningful synthesis of deductive and empirical research. Project 2: Public-Opinion Surveys and Open Societies Surveys of Japanese voters taking part in the 2003 election for the House of Representatives and the 2004 election for the House of Councillors will be conducted in an attempt to determine their attitudes toward the problems they expect to face in the future and to identify the choices they plan to make, especially concerning such issues as globalization, aging, the declining birthrate, and stagnant economic growth. The surveys will include questions designed to clarify the reasoning processes and voting strategies of voters, and an attempt will be made to coordinate the results with the work carried out in Project 1. Project 3: The Waseda Database of Political Economy The aim of this project is to create an archived database of census results, election returns, and public-opinion surveys as a means of facilitating the multidemensional analysis of political and economic issues in Japan and countries around the world. Results obtained from the experiments and surveys mentioned above will also be archived and made available for the use of researchers at Waseda and elsewhere. PROJECT MEMBER Aiji Tanaka Shinichi Hirota Fumihiko Hiruma Masaru Kohno Ikuo Kume Tomonori Morikawa Manabu Toda   Copyright © Waseda University, 21COE