Institutions, Institutional Change an..., Douglass C. North
Institutions, Institutional Change an..., Douglass C. North
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Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance

Author: Douglass C. North

Narrator: Mike Chamberlain

Unabridged: 7 hr 8 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/19/2019


Synopsis

Continuing his groundbreaking analysis of economic structures, Douglass North develops an analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies.Institutions exist due to the uncertainties involved in human interaction; they are the constraints devised to structure that interaction. Yet, institutions vary widely in their consequences for economic performance; some economies develop institutions that produce growth and development, while others develop institutions that produce stagnation.

North first explores the nature of institutions and explains the role of transaction and production costs in their development. The second part of the book deals with institutional change. Institutions create the incentive structure in an economy, and organizations will be created to take advantage of the opportunities provided within a given institutional framework. North argues that the kinds of skills and knowledge fostered by the structure of an economy will shape the direction of change and gradually alter the institutional framework. He then explains how institutional development may lead to a path-dependent pattern of development. In the final part of the book, North explains the implications of this analysis for economic theory and economic history.

About Douglass C. North

Douglass C. North is corecipient of the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. He is Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and Bartlett Burnap Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Professor North received the John R. Commons Award in 1992. He is author of eleven books, including Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance and Understanding the Process of Economic Change, and coauthor, with John Joseph Wallis and Barry R. Weingast, of Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Michael on June 07, 2012

An excellent little book that should be mandatory reading for any student of economics. North does an incredible job of reminding students that much of the world still exists beyond neoclassical models, and ignoring this fact has badly damaged the reputation and reliability of the field. While some o......more

Goodreads review by Vance on December 29, 2023

Douglass North provides an account of the importance of mental models for individuals’ learning and vision of the world along with how individuals shape social, economic, and political institutions. These include formal and informal rules as families, communities, and churches are driving force for......more

Goodreads review by Nick on June 07, 2016

The funny thing about this book is that political scientists and sociologists had been saying for a long time that institutions matter. In economics, however, this rediscovery can earn you a Nobel Prize! On a more serious note, however, this book is a theory of both why there has been divergence rat......more

Goodreads review by Richard on July 17, 2022

We all remember our development economics professors stressing the central role of "institutions" (in North's words: "institutions are the rules of the game in a society or, more formally, are the humanly-devised constraints that shape human interaction") in the nature, pace and sustainability of ec......more

Goodreads review by Richard on December 21, 2015

This is the key book marking the discovery of institutions by neoclassical economics - no matter that the other social sciences had incorporated institutions decades or centuries earlier. The trick then is to assimilate institutions to methodological individualism - the focus on individuals making d......more