Understanding the Process of Economic Change
- ISBN-10
- 0691145954
- ISBN-13
- 9780691145952
- Category
- Business & Economics
- Pages
- 187
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2010-05-09
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Author
- Douglass C. North
Description
In this landmark work, a Nobel Prize-winning economist develops a new way of understanding the process by which economies change. Douglass North inspired a revolution in economic history a generation ago by demonstrating that economic performance is determined largely by the kind and quality of institutions that support markets. As he showed in two now classic books that inspired the New Institutional Economics (today a subfield of economics), property rights and transaction costs are fundamental determinants. Here, North explains how different societies arrive at the institutional infrastructure that greatly determines their economic trajectories. North argues that economic change depends largely on "adaptive efficiency," a society's effectiveness in creating institutions that are productive, stable, fair, and broadly accepted--and, importantly, flexible enough to be changed or replaced in response to political and economic feedback. While adhering to his earlier definition of institutions as the formal and informal rules that constrain human economic behavior, he extends his analysis to explore the deeper determinants of how these rules evolve and how economies change. Drawing on recent work by psychologists, he identifies intentionality as the crucial variable and proceeds to demonstrate how intentionality emerges as the product of social learning and how it then shapes the economy's institutional foundations and thus its capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. Understanding the Process of Economic Change accounts not only for past institutional change but also for the diverse performance of present-day economies. This major work is therefore also an essential guide to improving the performance of developing countries.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Taxation for Decision Makers, Binder Ready Version
By Shirley Dennis-Escoffier, Karen A. Fortin[LO 8.2] The Timberlake Corporation has an opportunity to sell its manufacturing facility to Carroll Corporation for $4,500,000. The property has a basis of ...
-
Taxation for Decision Makers, 2019 Edition
By Shirley Dennis-Escoffier, Karen A. Fortin[LO 9.2] The Timberlake Corporation has an opportunity to sell its manufacturing facility to Carroll Corporation for $4,500,000. The property has a basis of ...
-
Taxation for Decision Makers, 2020
By Shirley Dennis-Escoffier, Karen A. Fortin[LO 9.2] The Timberlake Corporation has an opportunity to sell its manufacturing facility to Carroll Corporation for $4,500,000. The property has a basis of ...
-
Keeping House in Lusaka
By Karen Tranberg Hansen1934. Memorandum on the Native Tribes and Tribal Areas of Northern Rhodesia . Lusaka : Government Printer . Timberlake , Michael , ed . 1985.
-
Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World
By DAVID LEVINSON, KAREN CHRISTENSENTimberlake, L. (1987). Only one Earth. London: BBC Books: Earthscan. Tinker, I. (1987). Street foods: Testing assumptions about informal sector by women and ...
-
Taxation for Decision Makers 2006
By Shirley Dennis-Escoffier, Karen FortinThe Timberlake Corporation has an opportunity to sell its manufacturing facility to Carroll Corporation for $ 4,500,000 . The property has a basis of ...
-
Handbook of Organizational Performance: Behavior Analysis and Management
By William K Redmon, Thomas C Mawhinney, Carl Merle JohnsonTimberlake (1980, 1984) promulgated a behavioral-regulation analysis of learned performance that emphasizes the importance of behavioral.
-
Money and the Rule of Law: Generality and Predictability in Monetary Institutions
By Peter J. Boettke, Alexander William Salter, Daniel J. Smith190; Timberlake 1993, pp. 356–357). By increasing fiscal expenditures, President Carter may have successfully cornered the Fed into delaying tighter ...
-
Economic Politics: The Costs of Democracy
By William R. Keech, William R Keech( Timberlake , 1993 , p . 4 ) The same was true of the second Bank of the United States , which was chartered in 1816. However , under the leadership of ...
-
Handbook of Organizational Performance: Behavior Analysis and Management
By William K Redmon, Thomas C Mawhinney, Carl Merle JohnsonSchlinger, H. and Blakely, E. (1987). Function-altering effects of ... Timberlake, W. and Allison, J. (1974). Response deprivation: An empirical 48 HANDBOOK ...