North, Douglass Cecil (1920-2015), an American economist, applied modern economic and statistical methods to economic history. North’s work demonstrated that institutional changes over long periods of time, such as the development of and changes to property rights and laws, have as much impact on economic development as technological changes. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in 1993, sharing the prize with the American economist Robert William Fogel.
North was born on Nov. 5, 1920, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He served in the merchant marine during World War II (1939-1945). In 1952, he obtained a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. He had joined the staff of the University of Washington at Seattle in 1950, where he remained for almost 30 years. In 1979, he taught at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and, from 1981 to 1982, at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. In 1983, North moved to Washington University, St. Louis, as professor of law and liberty and economics. He acted as a consultant to a number of governments in Europe and South America.
North wrote a number of books. Structure and Change in Economic History (1981) traces the development of Western economies. In Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (1990), he posed the question of why such ideologies as Communism or fundamentalism shape and direct economies and the choices people make over significantly long periods of time. North died on Nov. 23, 2015.
