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

He attended the University of California-Berkeley, graduating in 1942. 5, 1920, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the youngest of three children. He will be deeply missed by his family, friends, colleagues, and students.ĭouglass Cecil North was born on Nov. He was among the most important and influential economic historians and economists of the late 20 th century. North passed away at the age of 95 at his home in Benzonia, Michigan. Shepsle) Preferences and Situations: Points of Contact between Historical and Rational Choice Institutionalisms (with Ira Katznelson) and The Handbook Political Economy (with Donald Wittman).Douglass C. He is the author of Positive Theories of Congressional Institutions (with Kenneth A. Krebs Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution as well as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A Professor of Economics at Washington University and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, he is the author of Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance and Understanding the Process of Economic Change. North is a pioneering economic historian and the co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics (1993). He is the author of How Latin America Fell Behind: Essays on the Economic Histories of Brazil and Mexico, 1800-1914 Industry and Underdevelopment: The Industrialization of Mexico, 1890-1940 and The Politics of Property Rights: Political Instability, Credible Commitments, and Economic Growth in Mexico, 1876-1929 (with Armando Razo and Noel Maurer). and Jeanne Welch Milligan Professor in the School of Humanities at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution. Specifically, the openness and competitiveness of a country’s political system tends to reflect itself in the openness and competitiveness of its financial system. While scholarly tradition points to the colonial origin of a country’s legal system as the most important determinant of the health of its financial system, this volume points instead to a country’s political institutions-its governmental structures and the rules of the political game-as the key. The essays in this volume employ the insights and techniques of political science, economics, and history to provide a fresh answer to this question. What is less clear is why some countries develop better financial systems than others. Countries with robust banking sectors and securities markets-that is, countries in which credit cards, loans, mortgages, and the ability to issue stocks and bonds are available to a broad swath of consumers and businesses-are more prosperous than countries that restrict such access to a favored elite. Economists have long maintained that a well-developed and functioning financial system is a vital prerequisite to economic growth.

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