Douglass North · Lablypedia

North was an influential figure in New Institutional Economics, which emphasizes the impact of institutions on economic behaviors and outcomes. North argued, "Institutions provide the incentive structure of an economy; as that structure evolves, it shapes the direction of economic change towards growth, stagnation, or decline." Rational and wealth-maximizing individuals lack complete information and have difficulties monitoring and enforcing agreements. Institutions can provide information and reduce transaction costs, thus encouraging economic activity.

Early life and education

Douglass North was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on November 5, 1920. He moved several times as a child due to his father's work at MetLife. The family lived in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, in Lausanne, Switzerland, in New York City, and in Wallingford, Connecticut.

North was educated at Ashbury College in Ottawa and the Choate School in Wallingford. He was accepted at Harvard at the same time that his father became the head of MetLife on the West Coast, so North chose instead to attend the University of California, Berkeley. During his time at Berkeley, North was a member of Chi Phi fraternity. In 1942, he graduated with a general B.A. in the humanities. Although his grades amounted to slightly better than a "C" average, he managed to complete a triple major in political science, philosophy and economics. That same year, he entered the US Merchant Marine Academy, graduated a year later and went to sea for three years as a deck officer.

A conscientious objector in World War II, North became a navigator in the Merchant Marine, traveling between San Francisco and Australia. During that time, he read economics and picked up his hobby of photography. He taught navigation at the Maritime Service Officers' School in Alameda during the last year of the war, and struggled with the decision of whether to become a photographer or an economist.

North returned to UC Berkeley, where he obtained a Ph.D. degree in economics in 1952. He subsequently began his career as an assistant professor at the University of Washington.

4 more chapters are free with a Lably account.

Academic career

From 1951 to 1983, North taught economics at the University of Washington, where he was an assistant professor till 1956, an associate professor from 1956 to 1960, and a full professor till 1983; he also chaired the economics department at Washington from 1967 to 1979. In 1960, North became co-editor of the Journal of Economic History, where he helped popularise cliometrics. In 1979 he served as the Peterkin Professor of Political Economy at Rice University, and in 1981–82 as the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University, before joining the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis in 1983 as the Henry R. Luce Professor of Law and Liberty in the Department of Economics (where he also directed the Center for Political Economy from 1984 to 1990). He also served as the Bartlett Burnap Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

In 1991, he became the first economic historian to win the John R. Commons Award, which was established by the International Honors Society for Economics in 1965.

A collection of North's papers is housed at the Rubenstein Library at Duke University.

Research agenda

Along with Ronald Coase and Oliver Williamson, he helped found the International Society for the New Institutional Economics (ISNIE) which held its first meeting in St. Louis in 1997. His research included property rights, transaction costs, the institutional basis of markets, and economic organization in history as well as economic development in developing countries.

North served as an expert for the Copenhagen Consensus and as an advisor to governments around the world. He was engaged in research (with John J. Wallis of the University of Maryland and Barry Weingast of Stanford University) on how countries emerge from what they call "the natural state" and into long-run economic growth. He was a trustee of Economists for Peace and Security, and a special adviser to the non-profit organization Vipani.

Personal life

North was married twice. His first marriage was to Lois Heister on June 29,1944 with whom he had three sons: Douglass Jr., Christopher and Malcolm. During the marriage, Heister became a notable activist and politician. The marriage ended in divorce in 1972. North remarried in the same year, to Elisabeth Case.

Death and legacy

North died on November 23, 2015, at his summer home in Benzonia, Michigan from esophageal cancer at the age of 95.

As a Nobel laureate, North's reputation extended both from his own university environment to the international influences made by his research and writing. North's research in New Economic History has included such notable economists and historians as Jonathan Hughes, Richard Sutch, Lloyd Mercer, Jim Sheperd, Donald Gordon, Gary Walton, Lance E. Davis, Robert Huttenback, Roger Ransom, Gaston Rimlinger, Terry L. Anderson, P.J. Hill, Philip Coelho, and David Knowles as recorded in the 60th Anniversary dedication volume in memory of North.