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1920–2015 United States
Douglass Cecil North (November 5, 1920 – November 23, 2015) was an American economist known for his work in economic history. He was the co-recipient (with Robert Fogel) of the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
United States Academics Economists Historians Nobel laureates Also known as: Douglass C North, Douglass C. North, Douglass Cecil North, North, Douglass C
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11 quotes
Effective institutions raise the benefits of cooperative solutions or the costs of defection, to use game theoretic terms.
Institutions (1990)
The factors we have listed (innovation, economies of scale, education, capital accumulation, etc.) are not causes of growth; they are growth.
Institutions are the humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic, and social interactions. They consist of both informal constraints (sanctions, taboos, customs, tradition, and code of conduct) and formal rules (constitutions, laws, property rights).
Institutions (1990)
Specialization in this world is rudimentary and self-sufficiency characterizes most individual households
Institutions (1990)
Its objectives to suggest new paths for the study of European economic history rather than fit either of these standard formats. It is more than anything an agenda for new research.
International specialization and division of labor requires institutions and organizations to safeguard property rights across international boundaries so that capital markets as well as other kinds of exchange can take place with credible commitment on the part of the players.
Institutions (1990)
Order in the societies they describe is the result of a dense social network where people have an intimate understanding of each other and the threat of violence is a continuous force for preserving order because of its implications for other members of society.
Institutions (1990)
We are far from understanding how to achieve adaptively efficient economies because allocative efficiency and adaptive efficiency may not always be consistent. Allocatively efficient rules would make today's firms and decisions secure - but frequently at the expense of the creative destruction process that Schumpeter had in mind.
Institutions (1990)
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.
Douglass North (1991)
Karl Marx and Adam Smith both subscribed to this view. They both saw successful growth as dependent on the development of efficient property rights. Their followers appear in the main to have forgotten this.
Information costs are reduced by the existence of large numbers of buyers and sellers. Under these conditions, prices embody the same information that would require large search costs by individual buyers and sellers in the absence of an organized market. (footnote 4: The original contributions were those of Hayek (1937 and 1945)).
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