Institutions are often modeled as Nash equilibria. The puzzle is how an institution can change endogenously, given that all players choose mutually best responses. To address this issue, the present paper proposes a framework that explicitly models players’ goals. It argues that the probabilities of attainment of players’ goals affect the stability of Nash equilibrium. If players fail to attain their goals in a Nash equilibrium, then this equilibrium is goal-unstable, as players are motivated to displace it. This goal-instability represents a push factor of institutional change. Since the goal-instability does not need to presuppose players’ knowledge of the desired outcome, the approach is consistent with the notion of entrepreneurial institutional innovation. It is shown that the proposed framework can provide micro-foundations for existing theories and extends the analysis to include open-endedness and the creative aspects of institutional change. This framework is applied to account for a change from coins to banknotes as a medium of exchange.

制度通常被建模为纳什均衡。难题在于，考虑到所有参与者都选择相互最佳的反应，机构如何才能发生内生变化。为了解决这个问题，本文提出了一个明确模拟玩家目标的框架。它认为玩家达成目标的概率会影响纳什均衡的稳定性。如果玩家未能在纳什均衡中实现他们的目标，那么这个均衡就是目标不稳定的，因为玩家有动力去取代它。这种目标不稳定性代表了制度变迁的推动因素。由于目标不稳定不需要预先假定参与者对预期结果的了解，因此该方法与创业制度创新的概念是一致的。结果表明，所提出的框架可以为现有理论提供微观基础，并将分析扩展到包括制度变迁的开放性和创造性方面。该框架用于解释从硬币到纸币作为交换媒介的变化。