Douglass C. North
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Douglass C. North
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1993
Born: 5 November 1920, Cambridge, MA, USA
Died: 23 November 2015, Benzonia, MI, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA
Prize motivation: “for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change”
Prize share: 1/2
Life
Douglass North was born in Cambridge, MA, USA. His family moved a number of times in his childhood, and North went to school in the US, Canada and Europe. He claimed to have been a mediocre student; however he finished his Ph.D. studies in 1952 at the University of California. North served as a navigator during WWII. He was a keen photographer and worked with Dorothea Lange in the 1940s.
Work
Douglass North’s work was primarily theoretical. He argued that technical innovations alone are insufficient to propel economic development. In order for a market economy to flourish, certain legal and social institutions must be in place. His ideas were expressed in a number of books; his groundbreaking work being The Economic Growth of the United States 1790–1860, published in 1961.
Nobel Prizes and laureates
Six prizes were awarded for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. The 12 laureates' work and discoveries range from proteins' structures and machine learning to fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons.
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