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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.

— Douglass North

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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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