Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T07:18:39.685Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Introduction to the Douglass C. North memorial issue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2016

GEOFFREY M. HODGSON
GEOFFREY M. HODGSON*
Affiliation:
Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK
*
*Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This introduction considers the highly influential contribution of Douglass C. North to economic history and institutional economics, as it developed from the 1960s until his death in 2015. It sketches the evolution of his arguments concerning the roles of institutions, organizations and human agency. North's conception of the economic actor became progressively more sophisticated, by acknowledging the role of ideology and adopting insights from cognitive science. Eventually, he abandoned the proposition that institutions are generally efficient, to propose instead that sub-optimal institutional forms could persist. A few noted criticisms of North's work are also considered here, ranging from those which are arguably off the mark, to others that retain some force. The contributions to this memorial issue are outlined at the end of this introduction.

Type
Introduction
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 13 , Issue 1: Douglass C. North Memorial Issue , March 2017 , pp. 1 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acemoglu, D. and Robinson, J. A. (2012), Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, New York: Random House and London: Profile.Google Scholar
Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S., and Robinson, J. A. (2005), ‘Institutions as a Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth’, in Aghion, P. and Durlauf, S. N. (eds.), Handbook of Economic Growth: Volume 1A, North Holland: Elsevier, pp. 385–472.Google Scholar
Alchian, A. A. (1950), ‘Uncertainty, Evolution, and Economic Theory’, Journal of Political Economy, 58 (2): 211–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alchian, A. A. (1965), ‘Some Economics of Property Rights’, Il Politico, 30 (4): 816–829.Google Scholar
Alchian, A. A. (1977), ‘Some Implications of Recognition of Property Right Transaction Costs’, in Brunner, K. (ed.), Economics and Social Institutions: Insights from the Conferences on Analysis and Ideology, Boston, MA: Martinus Nijhoff, pp. 234–255.Google Scholar
Allen, D. W. (2015), ‘The Coase Theorem: Coherent, Logical, and not Disproved’, Journal of Institutional Economics, 11 (2): 379–390.Google Scholar
Angeles, L. (2011), ‘Institutions, Property Rights, and Economic Development in Historical Perspective’, Kyklos, 64 (2): 157–177.Google Scholar
Ankarloo, D. (2002), ‘New Institutional Economics and Economic History’, Capital and Class, 78: 9–36.Google Scholar
Archer, M. S. (1995), Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Arrow, K. J. (1994), ‘Methodological Individualism and Social Knowledge’, American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings), 84 (2): 1–9.Google Scholar
Arthur, W. B. (1989), ‘Competing Technologies, Increasing Returns, and Lock-in by Historical Events’, Economic Journal, 99 (1): 116–131.Google Scholar
Barzel, Y. (1989), Economic Analysis of Property Rights, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bates, R. (2014), ‘The New Institutionalism’, in Galiani, S. and Sened, I. (eds.), Institutions, Property Rights and Economic Growth: The Legacy of Douglass North, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 50–65.Google Scholar
Bavel, B. v., Ansink, E., and Besouw, B. v. (2016), ‘Understanding the Economics of Limited Access Orders: Incentives, Organizations and the Chronology of Developments’, Journal of Institutional Economics, published online. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1744137416000254.Google Scholar
Calcagno, P. and Lopez, E. (2016), ‘Informal Norms Trump Formal Constraints: The Evolution of Fiscal Policy Institutions in the United States’, Journal of Institutional Economics, published online, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1744137416000321.Google Scholar
Clark, A. (1997), Being There: Putting the Brain, Body and World Together Again, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Coleman, J. S. (1982), The Asymmetric Society, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.Google Scholar
Commons, J. R. (1924), Legal Foundations of Capitalism, New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Cox, G. W. (2012), ‘Was the Glorious Revolution a Constitutional Watershed’, Journal of Economic History, 72 (3): 567–600.Google Scholar
David, P. A. (1985), ‘Clio and the Economics of QWERTY’, American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings), 75 (2): 332–337.Google Scholar
David, P. A. (2001), ‘Path Dependence, its Critics, and the Quest for “Historical Economics”’, Garrouste, P. and Ioannides, S. (eds.), Evolution and Path Dependence in Economic Ideas: Past and Present, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 15–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, L. E. and North, D. C. (1971), Institutional Change and American Economic Growth, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deakin, S., Gindis, D., Hodgson, G. M., Huang, K., and Pistor, K. (2016), ‘Legal Institutionalism: Capitalism and the Constitutive Role of Law’, Journal of Comparative Economics, published online. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2016.04.005.Google Scholar
Demsetz, H. (1968), ‘The Cost of Transacting’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 82 (1): 33–53.Google Scholar
Dequech, D. (2002), ‘The Demarcation Between the “Old” and the “New” Institutional Economics: Recent Complications’, Journal of Economic Issues, 36 (2): 565–572.Google Scholar
Donald, M. (1991), Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Economou, E. M. L. and Kyriazis, N. C. (2016), ‘The Emergence and the Evolution of Property Rights in Ancient Greece’, Journal of Institutional Economics, published online. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1744137416000205.Google Scholar
Fenoaltea, S. (1975), ‘The Rise and Fall of a Theoretical Model: The Manorial System’, Journal of Economic History, 35 (2): 386–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, M. (1953), ‘The Methodology of Positive Economics’, in Friedman, M. (ed.), Essays in Positive Economics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 3–43.Google Scholar
Fukuyama, F. (2011), The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, London and New York: Profile Books and Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Fukuyama, F. (2014), Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Greif, A. and Mokyr, J. (2016), ‘Cognitive Rules, Institutions and Economic Growth: Douglass North and Beyond’, Journal of Institutional Economics, published online, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1744137416000370.Google Scholar
Groenewegen, J., Kerstholt, F., and Nagelkerke, A. (1995), ‘On Integrating the New and Old Institutionalisms: Douglass North Building Bridges’, Journal of Economic Issues, 29 (2): 467–475.Google Scholar
Hahn, F. H. (1991), ‘The Next Hundred Years’, Economic Journal, 101 (1): 47–50.Google Scholar
Hartwell, C. A. (2016), ‘Determinants of property rights in Poland and Ukraine: The polity or politicians?’, Journal of Institutional Economics, published online. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1744137416000175.Google Scholar
Hindess, B. (1989), Political Choice and Social Structure: An Analysis of Actors, Interests and Rationality, Aldershot: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
Hindriks, F. and Guala, F. (2015), ‘Institutions, Rules, and Equilibria: A Unified Theory’, Journal of Institutional Economics, 11 (3): 459–480.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (1988), Economics and Institutions: A Manifesto for a Modern Institutional Economics, Cambridge and Philadelphia: Polity Press and University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (2001), How Economics Forgot History: The Problem of Historical Specificity in Social Science, London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (2004), The Evolution of Institutional Economics: Agency, Structure and Darwinism in American Institutionalism, London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (2006), ‘What Are Institutions?’, Journal of Economic Issues, 40 (1): 1–25.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (2007), ‘Meanings of Methodological Individualism’, Journal of Economic Methodology 14 (2): 211–226.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (2014), ‘On Fuzzy Frontiers and Fragmented Foundations: Some Reflections on the Original and New Institutional Economics’, Journal of Institutional Economics, 10 (4): 591–611.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (2015a), Conceptualizing Capitalism: Institutions, Evolution, Future, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (2015b), ‘On Defining Institutions: Rules versus Equilibria’, Journal of Institutional Economics, 11 (3): 499–505.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (2015c), ‘Much of the “Economics of Property Rights” Devalues Property and Legal Rights’, Journal of Institutional Economics, 11 (4): 683–709.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (2016a), ‘Varieties of Capitalism: Some Philosophical and Historical Considerations’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 40 (3): 941–960.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (2016b), ‘1688 and All that: Property Rights, the Glorious Revolution and the Rise of British Capitalism’, Journal of Institutional Economics, published online. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1744137416000266.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. and Knudsen, T. (2010), Darwin's Conjecture: The Search for General Principles of Social and Economic Evolution, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hoppit, J. (2011), ‘Compulsion, Compensation and Property Rights in Britain, 1688-1833’, Past and Present, 210 (1): 93–128.Google Scholar
Hutchins, E. (1995), Cognition in the Wild, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jensen, M. C. and Meckling, W. H. (1979), ‘Rights and Production Functions: An Application to Labor-Managed Firms and Codetermination’, Journal of Business, 52 (4): 469–506.Google Scholar
Khalil, E. L. (1995), ‘Organizations versus Institutions’, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 151 (3): 445–466.Google Scholar
Ménard, C. (1995), ‘Markets as Institutions versus Organizations as Markets? Disentangling Some Fundamental Concepts’, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 28 (2): 161–182.Google Scholar
Ménard, C. and Shirley, M. M. (2014), ‘The Contribution of Douglass North to New Institutional Economics’, in Galiani, S. and Sened, I. (eds.), Institutions, Property Rights and Economic Growth: The Legacy of Douglass North, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 11–29.Google Scholar
Milonakis, D. and Fine, B. (2007), ‘Douglass North's Remaking of Economic History: A Critical Appraisal’, Review of Radical Political Economics, 39 (1): 27–57.Google Scholar
Mirowski, P. (1981), ‘Is There a Mathematical Neoinstitutional Economics?’, Journal of Economic Issues, 15 (3): 593–613.Google Scholar
Murtazashvili, I. (2016), ‘Institutions and the shale boom’, Journal of Institutional Economics, published online. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1744137416000242.Google Scholar
North, D. C. (1961), The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860, New York: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
North, D. C. (1968), ‘Sources of Productivity Change in Ocean Shipping, 1600–1850’, Journal of Political Economy, 76 (5): 953–970.Google Scholar
North, D. C. (1971), ‘Institutional Change and Economic Growth’, Journal of Economic History, 31 (1): 118–125.Google Scholar
North, D. C. (1977), ‘Markets and Other Allocation Systems in History: The Challenge of Karl Polanyi’, Journal of European Economic History, 6 (3): 703–716.Google Scholar
North, D. C. (1978), ‘Structure and Performance: The Task of Economic History’, Journal of Economic Literature, 16 (3): 963–978.Google Scholar
North, D. C. (1981), Structure and Change in Economic History, New York: Norton.Google Scholar
North, D. C. (1990a), Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
North, D. C. (1990b), ‘A Transactions Cost Theory of Politics’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2 (4): 355–367.Google Scholar
North, D. C. (1994), ‘Economic Performance through Time’, American Economic Review, 84 (3): 359–367.Google Scholar
North, D. C. (2005a), Understanding the Process of Economic Change, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
North, D. C. (2005b), ‘Institutions and the Performance of Economies over Time’, in Ménard, C. and Shirley, M. M. (eds.), Handbook of New Institutional Economics, Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 21–30.Google Scholar
North, D. C. and Thomas, R. P. (1973), The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
North, D. C., Wallis, J. J., and Weingast, B. R. (2009), Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
North, D. C. and Weingast, B. R. (1989), ‘Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England’, Journal of Economic History, 49 (4): 803–832.Google Scholar
O'Connell, D. and Austen, S. (2016), ‘The Tortoise and the Hare: How North's Institutional Ideas Resolved a Nineteenth Century Australian Fable’, Journal of Institutional Economics, published online. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1744137416000187.Google Scholar
Ogilvie, S. and Carus, A. W. (2014), ‘Institutions and Economic Growth in Historical Perspective’, in Aghion, P. and Durlauf, S. (eds.), Handbook of Economic Growth, Vol. 2A, Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 403–513.Google Scholar
Pincus, S. C. A. and Robinson, J. A. (2014), ‘What Really Happened During the Glorious Revolution?’, in Galiani, S. and Sened, I. (eds.), Institutions, Property Rights, and Economic Growth: The Legacy of Douglass North, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 192–222.Google Scholar
Polanyi, K. (1944), The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, New York: Rinehart.Google Scholar
Polanyi, K., Arensberg, C. M., and Pearson, H. W. (eds.) (1957), Trade and Market in the Early Empires, Chicago: Henry Regnery.Google Scholar
Rutherford, M. H. (1995), ‘The Old and the New Institutionalism: Can Bridges be Built?’, Journal of Economic Issues, 29 (2): 443–451.Google Scholar
Searle, J. R. (1995), The Construction of Social Reality, London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Searle, J. R. (2005), ‘What is an Institution?’, Journal of Institutional Economics,1 (1): 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, H. A. (1957), Models of Man: Social and Rational. Mathematical Essays on Rational Human Behavior in a Social Setting, New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Tyler, T. R. (2006), Why People Obey the Law, 2nd edn. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Vandenberg, P. (2002), ‘North's Institutionalism and the Prospect of Combining Theoretical Approaches’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 26 (2): 217–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veblen, T. B. (1914), The Instinct of Workmanship, and the State of the Industrial Arts, New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Winter, S. G. Jr. (1964), ‘Economic “Natural Selection” and the Theory of the Firm’, Yale Economic Essays, 4 (1): 225–272. Reprinted in Hodgson, Geoffrey M. (ed.) (1998), The Foundations of Evolutionary Economics: 1890-1973, 2 vols, International Library of Critical Writings in Economics (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar).Google Scholar
Williamson, O. E. (1980), ‘The Organization of Work: A Comparative Institutional Assessment’, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 1 (1): 5–38.Google Scholar
Williamson, O. E. (1985), The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting, London and New York: Free Press and Macmillan.Google Scholar