Douglass C North
Biographic Data
| ID | 107422 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Douglass C North |
| GIVEN NAMES | Douglass C |
| FAMILY NAME | North |
| SIGNATURE | NORTH D C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Washington University in St. Louis |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 70 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3673 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 69 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1929 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
Gewalt und Gesellschaftsordnungen: Eine Neudeutung der Staats- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte
Alle Gesellschaften müssen sich mit der Möglichkeit wie der Realität von Gewalt auseinandersetzen; sie tun das auf unterschiedliche Art. Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis und Barry R. Weingast stellen das Problem der Gewalt in einen größeren sozialwissenschaftlichen und historischen Zusammenhang und zeigen, wie eng wirtschaftliches und politisches Verhalten verbunden sind. Die meisten aus der Geschichte bekannten Gesellschaften, von den Autor…
Empirical Studies in Institutional Change
Article Retiré: Institutions
Prix Nobel d’économie en 1993 pour ses travaux d’histoire économique, Douglass C. North est aujourd’hui un des leaders de la Nouvelle économie institutionnelle 1 . Dans cet article de synthèse 2 , North propose à la fois une définition des institutions et une analyse historique du rôle des institutions en économie. Nos collègues Maya Bacache-Beauvallet et Marc Montoussé qui ont dirigé Textes fondateurs en Sciences économiques depuis 1970 3 nous p…
What is Missing from Political Economy
This article discusses what is missing from the literature on political economy. The first section discusses the need for a dynamic theory, which is illustrated in three examples provided in the latter portion of the article. It then examines the centrality of beliefs and argues that the failure to understand some fundamental questions reflects that social science fails to have a truly dynamic theory that considers the non-ergodic nature of the w…
Violence and the Rise of Open-Access Orders
The problem of controlling the use of force and those who are best at wielding it is foundational to human collective life. For most of history, a social order that was relatively “closed” has seemed the most natural way to manage this problem. But over the past century or two, a transition from closed- to open-access orders has led to the emergence of societies with widespread political participation, the use of elections to select governments, …
Apprentissage, institutions et performance économique
Dans cet article, nous offrons un large aperçu des interactions entre cognition, systèmes de croyances et institutions, et comment elles affectent la performance économique. Nous estimons qu'une meilleure compréhension de l'émergence des institutions, de leurs propriétés de fonctionnement et de leurs effets sur les résultats politiques et économiques doit commencer par une analyse des processus cognitifs. Nous explorons la nature de l'apprentissa…
Limited Access Orders In The Developing World: A New Approach To The Problems Of Development
The upper-income, advanced industrial countries of the world today all have market economies with open competition, competitive multi-party democratic political systems, and a secure government monopoly over violence. Such open access orders, however, are not the only norm and equilibrium type of society. The middle and low-income developing countries today, like all countries before about 1800, can be understood as limited access orders that mai…
On Kenneth Binmore’s Natural Justice
Ken Binmore has written an exciting book and I am in complete agreement with his objectives and conclusions. But his approach is flawed because of his reliance on tools of analysis to understand the way the mind and brain have developed that are not up to explaining our evolving understanding of the human environment
A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History
Neither economics nor political science can explain the process of modern social development. The fact that developed societies always have developed economies and developed polities suggests that the connection between economics and politics must be a fundamental part of the development process. This paper develops an integrated theory of economics and politics. We show how, beginning 10,000 years ago, limited access social orders developed that…
Understanding the Process of Economic Change
In this landmark work, a Nobel Prize-winning economist develops a new way of understanding the process by which economies change. Douglass North inspired a revolution in economic history a generation ago by demonstrating that economic performance is determined largely by the kind and quality of institutions that support markets. As he showed in two now classic books that inspired the New Institutional Economics (today a subfield of economics), pr…
Wider Perspectives on Global Development
Lernen, Institutionen und Wirtschaftsleistung
This article provides a broad overview of the interplay among cognition, belief systems and institutions, fleshing out a position best characterized as ‚cognitive institutionalism‘. We argue that a deeper understanding of institutions’ emergence, their working properties and their effect on economic performance should start with the analysis of cognitive processes. Exploring the nature of individual and collective learning the article suggests th…
Learning, Institutions, and Economic Performance
In this article, we provide a broad overview of the interplay among cognition, belief systems, and institutions, and how they affect economic performance. We argue that a deeper understanding of institutions' emergence, their working properties, and their effect on economic and political outcomes should begin from an analysis of cognitive processes. We explore the nature of individual and collective learning, stressing that the issue is not wheth…
Konferenz der DGS (Sektion Soziologische Theorie) in Hamburg, 29. bis 31. Mai 2003 „Worlds of Capitalism — Globalization, Governance, and Democracy“
An Analytic Revolution in Comparative Politics
Over the last decade rational choice and formal theory have gained increasing prominence in comparative politics, portending a potential analytic revolution in the field. Like the behavioral revolution of the 1960s, the analytic revolution of the 1990s is motivated in part by the desire to make comparative politics more rigorous by utilizing analytical tools such as game theory and spatial models developed largely by economists and positivist sch…
Understanding institutions
Introduction: Institutional Analysis and Economic History
The three articles that follow this introductory essay reflect a rapidly growing effort in the social sciences to integrate institutional analysis with more traditional theory. In economic history, institutional analysis attempts to expand and enrich our understanding by modeling the ways in which the "rules of the game"-specifically, political and economic institutions-have affected economic behavior. By drawing on the literature of political ec…
Comment on Bo Gustafsson's “The methodological problems of institutional economic history”
The brand of institutional economics that I apply to history is called the New Institutional Economics. Beyond economic history it is being widely accepted and adopted by not only economists, but political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists and scholars from business schools and law schools as well. The reasons are not hard to see. This new approach confronts the very real problems of our society, integrates research from all the social sc…
Washington Meeting Breaks Attendance Record
Returning to Washington, D.C. for the first time in four years, attendance at the 1997 Annual Meeting surpassed all previous records, as more than 6,400 political scientists, exhibitors, and members of the press gathered at the Sheraton Washington and Omni Shoreham hotels during the last week of August
The New Institutional Economics and third World Development
Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes. Paul Bairoch
La evolución de las economías en el transcurso del tiempo
La historia económica se ocupa de la evolución de las economías en el transcurso del tiempo. El objetivo de las investigaciones que se realizan en este campo no es sólo aportar alguna luz sobre el pasado económico, sino también contribuir a la teoría económica ofreciendo un marco analítico que nos permita comprender los cambios económicos. El instrumento analítico ideal sería una teoría de la dinámica económica que fuera comparable por su precisi…
Shared Mental Models: Ideologies and Institutions
What do we mean by rationality
Institutionen, institutioneller Wandel und Wirtschaftsleistung
Institutionen, institutioneller Wandel und Wirtschaftsleistung
Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England
The article studies the evolution of the constitutional arrangements in seventeenth-century England following the Glorious Revolution of 1688. It focuses on the relationship between institutions and the behavior of the government and interprets the institutional changes on the basis of the goals of the winners—secure property rights, protection of their wealth, and the elimination of confiscatory government. We argue that the new institutions all…
Institutions
Institutions are the humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic, and social interaction. They consist of both informal constraints (sanctions, taboos, customs, traditions, and codes of conduct), and formal rules (constitutions, laws, property rights). Throughout history, institutions have been devised by human beings to create order and reduce uncertainty in exchange. Together with the standard constraints of economics they de…
Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance
Continuing his groundbreaking analysis of economic structures, Douglass North develops an analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies, both at a given time and over time. Institutions exist, he argues, due to the uncertainties involved in human interaction; they are the constraints devised to structure that interaction. Yet, institutions vary widely in their conse…
Shared Mental Models: Ideologies and Institutions
A Transaction Cost Theory of Politics
This essay first specifies and describes the behavioral and information cost assumptions that underlie instrumental rationality and the consequent a-institutional world of neoclassical theory and contrasts these assumptions to those that underpin a theory of institutions and transaction costs. It then explores the characteristics of political markets, characterizing the costs of transacting in political markets and the role of ideology in shaping…
Location Theory and Regional Economic Growth
Institutions and economic growth: An historical introduction
Institutions, Transaction Costs and Economic Growth
This essay develops a theoretical framework which explores the historical obstacles to economic growth. These obstacles are examined in the context of the political/economic institutional framework of economies in history and consequent transaction costs that determine economic performance and growth. The essay concludes with specific suggestions for the study of economic growth
The Rise and Fall of the Manorial System: A Theoretical Model
European economic history has always been concerned with the grand theme of the rise of the Western World. Sometimes this is put in terms of the transition from feudalism to capitalism and, if a Marxian dialectician is present, eventually to socialism. The literature is essentially the product of historians and as such is particularistic. No consistent theoretical foundation runs through it, except perhaps the Marxian one. The result is a chaotic…
Sources of Productivity Change in Ocean Shipping, 1600-1850
Ocean Freight Rates and Economic Development 1730-1913
Revolutionary developments in transport have been an essential feature of the rapiddevelopments in transportgrowth of the past two centuries. Reduction in the cost of carriage has enabled specialization and division of labor on a national and international basis to replace the relatively self-sufficient economies that predominated in the western world two centuries ago. The striking role of the railroad in the nineteenth century is well known. Ho…
Institutional Change and American Economic Growth: A First Step Towards a Theory of Institutional Innovation
This paper attempts to provide an explanation of the formation and mutation of economic institutions. It is specifically concerned with that process as it has developed over the past one hundred and seventy-five years of American history, but with appropriate changes the model might be used to predict institutional change in the future and to explain institutional change in other nations and in other eras. Like more traditional theory, the model …
Violence and the Rise of Open-Access Orders
The problem of controlling the use of force and those who are best at wielding it is foundational to human collective life. For most of history, a social order that was relatively “closed” has seemed the most natural way to manage this problem. But over the past century or two, a transition from closed- to open-access orders has led to the emergence of societies with widespread political participation, the use of elections to select governments, …
An Economic Theory of the Growth of the Western World
Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance
The First Economic Revolution
Learning, Institutions, and Economic Performance
In this article, we provide a broad overview of the interplay among cognition, belief systems, and institutions, and how they affect economic performance. We argue that a deeper understanding of institutions' emergence, their working properties, and their effect on economic and political outcomes should begin from an analysis of cognitive processes. We explore the nature of individual and collective learning, stressing that the issue is not wheth…
A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History
Neither economics nor political science can explain the process of modern social development. The fact that developed societies always have developed economies and developed polities suggests that the connection between economics and politics must be a fundamental part of the development process. This paper develops an integrated theory of economics and politics. We show how, beginning 10,000 years ago, limited access social orders developed that…
Understanding the Process of Economic Change
In this landmark work, a Nobel Prize-winning economist develops a new way of understanding the process by which economies change. Douglass North inspired a revolution in economic history a generation ago by demonstrating that economic performance is determined largely by the kind and quality of institutions that support markets. As he showed in two now classic books that inspired the New Institutional Economics (today a subfield of economics), pr…
Institutional Change and Economic Growth
The meteoric rise of the new economic history reflects the fact that historians abhor a vacuum and sometimes it seems to reflect an even baser instinct that any theory is better than no theory. Of course, any explanation always uses theory; however, it was usually implicit and frequently a bouillabaisse in which Marx, Veblen and the German historical school floated around in as equally indigestible lumps. But the combination of an internally cons…
A framework for analyzing the state in economic history
Beyond the New Economic History
The new economic history has been with us now for almost a score of years. Its practitioners have advanced from young revolutionaries to become a part of the middle-aged establishment; and by all the criteria of publication and training of graduate students, it has indeed transformed the discipline in the United States. From my quite subjective perspective, the new economic history has made a significant contribution to revitalizing the field and…
The United States Balance of Payments
The three appendixes describe the methods and estimates in some detail.An extended analysis will be contained in my forthcoming study on United States Economic Growth from 1790 to 1860.Note: My study has profited from a continuous interchange on methods and procedures with Dr.. Matthew Simon, whose report on an investigation of the balance of payments of the United States from 1860 to 1900 is included in this volume.Together we have tried to prov…
Government and the Cost of Exchange in History
A general transaction cost framework is developed to analyze the costs of exchange and the role of government in the costs of exchange. Three general types of exchange are specified: personal exchange, exchange without third-party enforcement, and exchange with third-party enforcement. The framework is then employed to analyze government and the costs of exchange in history
International Capital Flows and the Development of the American West
When the Chairman asked me to undertake this paper he reminded me that the general theme was the West as an underdeveloped area and suggested that some comparison be made with underdeveloped areas today. However, it should be made clear at the outset that the problems of the development of the American West in the nineteenth century are very different from the problems of achieving sustained growth in the underdeveloped areas today. The underdeve…
The United States Balance of Payments
The three appendixes describe the methods and estimates in some detail.An extended analysis will be contained in my forthcoming study on United States Economic Growth from 1790 to 1860.Note: My study has profited from a continuous interchange on methods and procedures with Dr.. Matthew Simon, whose report on an investigation of the balance of payments of the United States from 1860 to 1900 is included in this volume.Together we have tried to prov…
Life Insurance and Investment Banking at the Time of the Armstrong Investigation of 1905-1906
An Essential factor in the rise of the investment banker to a dominant position in the American economy in the decades following 1880 was his command of the mobilized savings of the country's financial institutions. While considerable research has been devoted to the investment bankers' domination of transport and industry, little attention has been paid to their organization of financial institutions and their significance for the development of…
Location Theory and Regional Economic Growth
The Spatial and Interregional Frame Work of the U.S. Economy
Exports and Regional Economic Growth: A Reply
Merchants, Farmers, and Railroads . Lee Benson
International Capital Flows and the Development of the American West
When the Chairman asked me to undertake this paper he reminded me that the general theme was the West as an underdeveloped area and suggested that some comparison be made with underdeveloped areas today. However, it should be made clear at the outset that the problems of the development of the American West in the nineteenth century are very different from the problems of achieving sustained growth in the underdeveloped areas today. The underdeve…
Agenda For A History Of Management Policies Towards Labor In The United States
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Ocean Freight Rates and Economic Development 1730-1913
Revolutionary developments in transport have been an essential feature of the rapiddevelopments in transportgrowth of the past two centuries. Reduction in the cost of carriage has enabled specialization and division of labor on a national and international basis to replace the relatively self-sufficient economies that predominated in the western world two centuries ago. The striking role of the railroad in the nineteenth century is well known. Ho…
Early National Income Estimates of the U. S
The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790-1860
The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790-1860
The Emergence of a National Economy, 1775-1815
Sources of Productivity Change in Ocean Shipping, 1600-1850
Institutional Change and American Economic Growth: A First Step Towards a Theory of Institutional Innovation
This paper attempts to provide an explanation of the formation and mutation of economic institutions. It is specifically concerned with that process as it has developed over the past one hundred and seventy-five years of American history, but with appropriate changes the model might be used to predict institutional change in the future and to explain institutional change in other nations and in other eras. Like more traditional theory, the model …
An Economic Theory of the Growth of the Western World
Institutional Change and American Economic Growth
This book presents a model for examining problems of institutional change and applies it to American economic development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The authors develop their model of institutional change. They argue that if external economic factors make an increase in income possible but not attainable within the existing institutional structure, new organizations must be developed to achieve the potential in income. Their model…
The Rise and Fall of the Manorial System: A Theoretical Model
European economic history has always been concerned with the grand theme of the rise of the Western World. Sometimes this is put in terms of the transition from feudalism to capitalism and, if a Marxian dialectician is present, eventually to socialism. The literature is essentially the product of historians and as such is particularistic. No consistent theoretical foundation runs through it, except perhaps the Marxian one. The result is a chaotic…
Institutional Change and Economic Growth
The meteoric rise of the new economic history reflects the fact that historians abhor a vacuum and sometimes it seems to reflect an even baser instinct that any theory is better than no theory. Of course, any explanation always uses theory; however, it was usually implicit and frequently a bouillabaisse in which Marx, Veblen and the German historical school floated around in as equally indigestible lumps. But the combination of an internally cons…
Economic History and Economic Theory: The New Economic History in America
Harold D. Woodman, Economic History and Economic Theory: The New Economic History in America, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 3, No. 2, Economics, Society, and History (Autumn, 1972), pp. 323-350
Institutional Change and American Economic Growth
The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History
First published in 1973, this is a radical interpretation, offering a unified explanation for the growth of Western Europe between 900 A. D. and 1700, providing a general theoretical framework for institutional change geared to the general reader.
Reply to Professor D. Ringrose
PROF. Ringrose's article is a welcome addition to the growing interest in developing a systematic approach to European history constructed from new developments in the social sciences. We find ourselves in agreement with some of his analysis. Moreover we have substantially elaborated the theory1 since we presented it in preliminary form in this journal, and we believe we can explain a number of the difficulties inherent in our first tentative pre…
Beyond the New Economic History
The new economic history has been with us now for almost a score of years. Its practitioners have advanced from young revolutionaries to become a part of the middle-aged establishment; and by all the criteria of publication and training of graduate students, it has indeed transformed the discipline in the United States. From my quite subjective perspective, the new economic history has made a significant contribution to revitalizing the field and…
Institutional Change and American Economic Growth
Journal Article Institutional Change and American Economic Growth. By Lance E. Davis and Douglass C. North. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1971. viii + 283 pp. Charts, tables, notes, and index. $10.93.) Get access Morton Rothstein Morton Rothstein University of Wisconsin, Madison Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 61, Issue 1, June 1974, Pages 147–148, https://doi.org…
Political science (50 works) · Economics (48 works) · Economic Theory and Institutions (26 works) · Law (25 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Politics (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Neoclassical economics (16 works) · Historical Economic and Social Studies (15 works) · Economic system (14 works)