| The foundation of World Trade Organization (WTO) and the appearance of Internet are two significant events in human history, which connect the markets all over the world as a whole by means of both institution and technology. As more and more nations merged into the international economic division system, international competition becomes more and more severe. Governments as well as enterprises have been paying more and more emphasis on the strategy of international competition. As a result, from 1980s, researches on competitiveness of nations became more and more active. In particular, Global Competitiveness Report and World Competitiveness Yearbook, published by WEF and IMD respectively, have been attracting attention from all over the world. Driven by WEF and IMD, research on the evaluation of competitiveness of nations quickly becomes a hot academic field. However, up to date, our understanding about competitiveness of nations is not so deep, the theoretical fundamental of the evaluation of competitiveness of nations is rather weak, and the design of the evaluation index system of competitiveness of nations is extremely at random, lacking adequate theory support.In this dissertation, the activity of international economic competition is regarded as a game process and analyzed by principles and methods of Game Theory strictly. On this basis, the author discusses the composition factors and key determinants of the competitiveness of nations, providing new methodology for the establishment of a rational evaluation system of competitiveness of nations. In fact, as the most classical competition theory, Game Theory has been widely applied to research competition issues in such fields as economics, politics, military decision, computer science and biological evolution. However, there is no successful case of the application of Game Theory on competitiveness evaluation so far. This dissertation is aimed at exploring and making some breakthrough on such application.The dissertation is composed of four chapters.Chapter 1: The Introduction to the Research on the Evaluation of Competitiveness of NationsThe topic of competitiveness of nations appeared since the appearance of countries. The origin of the research on the evaluation of competitiveness of nations dates back to Master Sun's Art of War more than 2500 years ago. From the perspective of economics, the research started from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, in which the famous theory of "Absolute advantage" was first mentioned. Later, David Ricardo's theory of "Comparative advantage" took the place of the theory of "Absolute advantage", becoming the guiding theory of the evaluation of competitiveness of nations. However, the appearance of the "competitiveness of nations" as a formal economic concept owes to Michael Porter's famous Competitive Advantage of Nations. The "Diamond Model" first mentioned in this book became an effective operational tool in the analysis and evaluation of competitiveness of nations. Besides, from 1980s, WEF and IMD developed their own evaluation system of competitiveness of nations respectively, publishing their own research report every year: The Global Competitiveness Report (GCP) and World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY). These two reports are arresting, but are also criticized by many people for their theoretical and methodological disadvantages. The severe internationaleconomic competitions call for better theories and methods on the evaluation of competitiveness of nations.Chapter 2: The Inevitability of Game Theory to Apply in the Evaluation of Competitiveness of NationsIn the severe international competition, every nation hopes to maximize its interests. However, due to the existence of negative factors such as the instability of the international environment, transaction cost, information asymmetry and activities of opportunism, a nation is difficult to achieve its goal. At the same time, such limitations also provide vast space for the usage of national strategies. Game Theory, as the science researching people's strategy-choosing rules in interest-related rational activities, which has developed into a complex theory system, including Zero-sum Game, Static Game, Dynamic Game, Repeated Game, Incomplete Information Game, Evolution Game, and etc, has wide applications in economics. Especially, it has been successfully applied in the analysis of international economic competitions, such as international trade competition, national account balance, international investment competition, international R&D competition, and the multipolar competition structure of the world economy. There is no doubt that Game Theory can also be applied successfully in the research of the competitiveness of nations.Chapter 3: The Game Analysis of International Economic Competition and the Determining Factors of Competitiveness of NationsIt is known that any competitive international economic activity can be regarded as a game process and be capable of undergoing game analysis. We can also treat the international economic competition as a whole game process and take analysis of it. As any other game, international economic game is also comprised of four basic essences: players, information, action strategies and payoff functions. With respect to evaluation of competitiveness of nations, the players are the countries or regions as economies. The payoff of the international economic game or the target of competitiveness of nations is to pursue the maximum of national wealth. The human history tells us that, the win-win strategy is the best game strategy of countries, which is characterized by Ricardo's Comparative Advantage theory. Nowadays, the information structure of the international economic game is generalized as the contradict unification of "the symmetry of general information and the asymmetry of key information". The static analysis, dynamic analysis and asymmetric analysis of international economic games indicate that, institutional innovation is as important as technological innovation to a nation in order to improve its productivity and economic competitiveness, as if they were two sides of the same coin.Chapter 4: The Evaluation System of Competitiveness of nations Based on International Economic Game AnalysisUnder the perspective of Game Theory, competitiveness of nations is regarded as a nation's ability to earn the maximized balanced wealth in international economic games. This definition appropriately adopts the previous definition on competitiveness of nations. Competitiveness of nations is determined by a nation's information ability, strategy ability and payoff function in the way of multiplication. National information ability is composed of three factors: civilian education level, national informatization level and information freedom level. Civilian education level is indicated by adult literacy rate and average education time, Informatization level by the number of internet users and the number of computers per 10,000 inhabitants, and information freedom level by press freedom level. National strategy ability is composed of technology advance ability,violence determent ability and international institution-arrangement ability. Technology advance ability is indicated by R&D investment and tertiary enrollment rate, violence determent ability by military expenditure and the number of nuclear warheads, and international institution-arrangement ability by the number of international organizations a nation initiated and the voting power in international organizations. National payoff function is composed by GDP per capita, indicating a nation's comprehensive payoff ability, and technology and management level (the number of international patents and brands registered by per million citizens), indicating a nation's core payoff ability. Empirical analysis shows that the result from this evaluation system is more closed to our common sense and the actual situation than that from the WEF and IMD system.Table: 56 Chart: 23... |
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