Institutional Change and American Economic Growth.

NORTH, Douglass C & Lance E. Davis.

$650.00

Item Number: 5607

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.

First edition of this work by the Nobel Prize-winning economist. Octavo, original green cloth. Inscribed by Douglass C. North on the front free endpaper. Fine in a near fine dust jacket with light shelfwear.

Institutional Change and American Economic Growth presents a model for examining problems of institutional change and applies it to American economic development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The authors develop their model of institutional change. They argue that if external economic factors make an increase in income possible but not attainable within the existing institutional structure, new organizations must be developed to achieve the potential in income. Their model is designed to explain the type and timing of these necessary changes in institutional organization. Individual, voluntary cooperative, and governmental arrangements are included in the discussion, although the latter differs considerably from the first two.