Douglass C. North, in full Douglass Cecil North, (born November 5, 1920, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.—died November 23, 2015, Benzonia, Michigan), American economist, recipient, with Robert W. Fogel, of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. The two were recognized for their pioneering work in cliometrics—also called “new economic history”—the application of economic theory and statistical methods to the study of history.
North studied economics, philosophy, and political science at the University of California, Berkeley (B.A., 1942; Ph.D., 1952). From 1950 he taught economics at the University of Washington, leaving in 1983 to join the faculty of Washington University (St. Louis, Missouri). From 1961 to 1966 he was director of the Institute for Economic Research, and from 1967 to 1987 he was director of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He also acted as economic consultant to governments around the world. North was elected in 1987 to the American Academy of Arts and Science and in 1996 was made a fellow of the British Academy. In 1997 he became a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
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, such as property rights, must be in place. His ideas were expressed in a number of books, including The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860 (1961), Structure and Change in Economic History (1981), Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (1990), and Understanding the Process of Economic Change (2005).