IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/cesptp/halshs-00624297.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Contribution of Douglass North to New Institutional Economics

Author

Listed:
  • Claude Ménard

    () (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Mary M. Shirley

    () (RCI - Ronald Coase Institute - Ronald Coase Institute)

Abstract

Douglass North, along with Ronald Coase and Oliver Williamson, transformed the early intuitions of new institutional economics into powerful conceptual and analytical tools that spawned a robust base of empirical research. NIE arose in response to questions not well explained by standard neoclassical models, such as make or buy and why rich or poor? Today NIE is a success story by many measures: four Nobel laureates in under 20 years, increasing penetration of mainstream journals, and significant impact on major policy debates from anti-trust law to development aid. This paper provides a succinct overview of North's evolving ideas about institutions and explains how North's work shaped the emerging field of new institutional economics and had a potent impact on economics and the social sciences more broadly. North provides a powerful example of how persistent and well placed confidence and hard work can productively transform the status quo. North's influence continues strong and his enthusiasm for exploring new frontiers and cooperating across artificial academic boundaries has never waned.

Suggested Citation

  • Claude Ménard & Mary M. Shirley, 2011. "The Contribution of Douglass North to New Institutional Economics," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00624297, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-00624297
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00624297
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00624297/document
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martens,Bertin & Mummert,Uwe & Murrell,Peter & Seabright,Paul, 2008. "The Institutional Economics of Foreign Aid," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521055390, December.
    2. Stephen Knack & Philip Keefer, 1995. "Institutions And Economic Performance: Cross‐Country Tests Using Alternative Institutional Measures," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(3), pages 207-227, November.
    3. North, Douglass C, 1994. "Economic Performance through Time," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 359-368, June.
    4. Knack, Stephen & Keefer, Philip, 1995. "Institutions and Economic Performance: Cross-Country Tests Using Alternative Institutional Indicators," MPRA Paper 23118, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. repec:dau:papers:123456789/12319 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 2002. "15 Years of New Growth Economics : What Have we Learnt?," Journal Economía Chilena (The Chilean Economy), Central Bank of Chile, vol. 5(2), pages 5-15, August.
    7. North, Douglass C. & Weingast, Barry R., 1989. "Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 49(4), pages 803-832, December.
    8. Cheung, Steven N S, 1969. "Transaction Costs, Risk Aversion, and the Choice of Contractual Arrangements," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 12(1), pages 23-42, April.
    9. William Easterly, 2002. "The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262550423, September.
    10. Whitney, William G., 1966. "Growth and Welfare in the American Past: A New Economic History. By Douglass C. North. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. Pp. xiv, 198. $5.95 (clothbound); $2.95 (paperback)," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 26(3), pages 395-396, September.
    11. Douglass C. North, 1968. "Sources of Productivity Change in Ocean Shipping, 1600-1850," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 76, pages 953-953.
    12. Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 2002. "Fifteen Years of New Growth Economics: What Have We Learned?," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Norman Loayza & Raimundo Soto & Norman Loayza (Series Editor) & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel (Series Editor) (ed.),Economic Growth: Sources, Trends, and Cycles, edition 1, volume 6, chapter 2, pages 041-060, Central Bank of Chile.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gabriela Przeslawska, 2019. "Significance of uncertainty in explaining institutional change in Douglass C. North’s approach," Ekonomia i Prawo, Uniwersytet Mikolaja Kopernika, vol. 18(3), pages 331-346, September.
    2. Peter Lloyd & Cassey Lee, 2016. "A Review of the Recent Literature on the Institutional Economics Analysis of the Long-Run Performance of Nations," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 2019, The University of Melbourne.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    New Institutional Economics; institutions; transaction costs; development and growth;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-00624297. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (CCSD). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.