Understanding the Process of Economic Change / / Douglass C. North.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: North, Douglass C.,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2010]; ©2005
• Year of Publication: 2010
• Edition: Course Book
• Language: English
• Series: The Princeton Economic History of the Western World ; 32
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (200 p.) :; 12 line illus. 1 table.

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Chapter One. An Outline of the Process of Economic Change -- Part I. The Issues Involved in Understanding Economic Change -- Introduction -- Chapter Two. Uncertainty in a Non-ergodic World -- Chapter Three. Belief Systems, Culture, and Cognitive Science -- Chapter Four. Consciousness and Human Intentionality -- Chapter Five. The Scaffolds Humans Erect -- Chapter Six. Taking Stock -- Part II. The Road Ahead -- Introduction -- Chapter Seven. The Evolving Human Environment -- Chapter Eight. The Sources of Order and Disorder -- Chapter Nine. Getting It Right and Getting It Wrong -- Chapter Ten. The Rise of the Western World -- Chapter Eleven. The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union -- Chapter Twelve. Improving Economic Performance -- Chapter Thirteen. Where Are We Going? -- Bibliography -- Index