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Quotes from Institutions — Douglass North

1920–2015 United States

← All quotes by Douglass North

6 quotes

Effective institutions raise the benefits of cooperative solutions or the costs of defection, to use game theoretic terms.

Institutions (1990)

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)

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)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Douglass North (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.