Publications by Douglass North

Publications by Douglass North

Defining the State image

Defining the State

John J. Wallis, Douglass North | Jun 09, 2010
The violence that matters in any society is organized violence. The starting point for any theory of the state, therefore, has to be how the state organizes violence rather than how it uses violence.
Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History image

Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History

Douglass North, Barry Weingast, John Wallis | Feb 26, 2009
The book integrates the problem of violence into a larger social science and historical framework, showing how economic and political behaviors are closely linked. It compares "natural" to "modern" states and provides a framework for understanding the two types of social orders, why modern states are both politically and economically more developed, and how some 25 countries have made the transition between the two types.
A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History image

A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History

Barry Weingast, Douglass North, John Wallis | Apr 2007
This paper develops an integrated theory of economics and politics. North, Wallis, and Weingast demonstrate in this working paper how, beginning 10,000 years ago, limited access social orders developed that were able to control violence, provide order, and allow greater production through specialization and exchange.

Understanding the Process of Economic Change

Douglass North | Jan 03, 2005
In this landmark work, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, Douglass North, develops a new way of understanding the process by which economies change. North explains how different societies arrive at the institutional infrastructure that greatly determines their economic trajectories.
Understanding the Process of Economic Change - Working Paper image

Understanding the Process of Economic Change - Working Paper

Douglass North | May 2003
In this working paper, Douglass North focuses on the deliberate efforts of humans to control their environment, and therefore the priority is on institutional change in order to understand the process of economic change.