Douglass North

Douglass Cecil North ( born November 5, 1920 in Cambridge ( Massachusetts)) is an American economist and economic historian. He received in 1993 along with Robert William Fogel the Prize in Economic Sciences the Bank of Sweden in memory of Alfred Nobel for their renewal of economic history research by applying economic theory and quantitative methods ( Cliometrie ) in order to explain economic and institutional change. At the same time Douglass North provides his analysis of institutional change is an important cornerstone of classical and neoclassical economic theories - namely, the theory of rational decision - in question.

Life

Douglass C. North was born in Cambridge (Massachusetts ), the son of a life insurance manager and grew up in Ottawa, Lausanne, New York and Connecticut. After his family moved to San Francisco, North studied at the University of California (Berkeley ) Politics, Philosophy and Economics. In 1942 he completed his studies with a Bachelor of Arts degree and joined as a declared war opponents of the U.S. Merchant Marine ( for the transport of troops and equipment ). From 1944 until his resignation in 1946, he taught from at the Naval Academy in Alameda Celestial navigation.

After returning to Berkeley, he earned his doctorate in 1952 on the history of life insurance in the United States. According to his own statements Norths economic history caregivers of economic theory were rather skeptical about, so that he had met her closer was only in contact with colleagues at the University of Washington (Seattle ), where he got his first teaching position.

After his first article in the Journal of Political Economy about regional economics and economic growth ( Location Theory and Regional Economic Growth, JPE, Vol 63, H. 3, 1955, pp. 243-258 ), he received the opportunity 1956-57 at the Research Institute National Bureau of Economic Research ( NBER ) to work, where he worked primarily with empirical research on the U.S. balance of payments 1790-1860, which he built in the next ten years to the book The Economic Growth of the United States from 1790 to 1860. Since the early sixties North was one of the pioneers of Cliometrie, the application of economic theory and quantitative- statistical methods to economic history research objects. During a year abroad in Geneva 1966/67, he turned more to the economic history of Europe. Since then he has explored a focus on the social structural changes associated with economic developments and influence and enable. During this work, he developed piece by piece his theory of institutional change, the increasingly turning away from efficiency and rationality paradigm of the neoclassical view of institutions.

In 1983 he moved from the University of Washington to the law and economics faculty of the Washington University in St. Louis, where he was from 1984 to 1990 director of the Center for Political Economy. In 1992, he became the first economic historian at all one of the most important for economists Awards, the John R. Commons Award, in 1965 by the International Honors Society in Economics: was called (and in the International Society for awards in the economy) to life. His current research interests include property rights, transaction costs, economic organization in history, institutions and economic development in developing countries.

North served as expert at the Copenhagen Consensus. North is married to his second wife since 1972. From his first marriage he had three sons who were born 1951-1957.

Works (selection)

• Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1990, inter alia, Cambridge, ISBN 0-521-39416-3 ( translated into German by Monika Streissler as:. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance ( = The unit of the Social Sciences Vol 76) Mohr, Tübingen, 1992, ISBN. 3-16-146024-3 ).
• Understanding the Process of Economic Change. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, inter alia, 2005, ISBN 0-691-11805-1.