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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.

— Douglass North Institutions (1990)

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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.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Douglass North (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.