Introduction

Douglass C. North has earned himself a place of honor in the pantheon of the most influential social scientists of his era, as was recognized in 1993 when he and economic historian Robert Fogel were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for their work in economic history. North was born in 1920 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. He then took an appointment at the University of Washington until he moved to Washington University in St. Louis in 1983. In 1959–1960, North cofounded cliometrics, an association of economic historians that systematically applied statistical methods and economic theory to the study of history. However, by the late 1960s, his ideas about institutions and their central role in the study of economics began to evolve, dominating his work. Later, during the 1970s, he also cofounded the New Institutional Economics, a group of social scientists that expanded the reach of standard economic analysis by taking into account transactions costs and the importance of institutions and organizations as critical determinants of social phenomena in terms of processes, actions, and outcomes. The group’s work has had a strong effect on all of the social sciences, but its most remarkable influence is felt in political science and economics.