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Douglass North
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American economist and Nobel laureate (1920–2015)
Douglass North was an American economist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics and fundamentally changed how scholars understand economic history by studying how institutions—the rules and organizations that structure society—shape economic development. His work matters because it showed that economic success depends not just on resources or technology, but on having effective legal systems, property rights, and political structures that encourage productive activity.
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Key facts
- Born
- ( 1920-11-05 ) November 5, 1920, Cambridge, Massachusetts , U.S.
- Died
- November 23, 2015 (2015-11-23) (aged 95) , Benzonia, Michigan , U.S.
- Spouses
- Lois Heister ( married</span>"}]]}'>m. 1944 ; divorced</span>"}]]}'>div. 1972 ) Elisabeth Case ( married</span>"}]]}'>m. 1972 )
- Awards
- Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1993)
- Education
- University of California, Berkeley (B.A., Ph.D.)
- Thesis
- The Large Life Insurance Companies Before 1906: A Study of Their Growth, Their Domination of the Industry, and Their Alliances With Investment Banking as Revealed by the Armstrong Investigation of 1905–1906 (1952)
- Influences
- Melvin M. Knight
- School or tradition
- New Institutional Economics
- Institutions
- University of Washington , Rice University , Cambridge University , Washington University in St. Louis , Stanford University , Hoover Institution , US Merchant Marine Academy
via Wikipedia infobox
Nobel Prize
- The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel1993
“for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change”
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Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Family name
- North
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- United States
- Place of birth
- Cambridge
- Place of death
- Benzonia
- Occupation
- university teacher
- Languages spoken
- English language
- Field of work
- economics
- Image
- Douglass North.jpg
Show 8 more facts
- date of birth
- 1920-11-05
- date of death
- 2015-11-23
- Commons category
- Douglass North
- name in native language
- Douglass Cecil North
- cause of death
- esophageal cancer
- manner of death
- natural causes
- interested in
- history
via Wikidata · CC0
~19 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Douglass Cecil North (November 5, 1920 – November 23, 2015) was an American economist known for his work in economic history. Along with Robert Fogel, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1993. In the words of the Nobel Committee, North and Fogel "renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change."
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.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Douglass North” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.