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Economic Performance Through Time

文献名称 Economic Performance Through Time
文献作者 Douglas C. North
作者所在单位 Washington University
文献分类 已发表文献
学科一级分类 经济
学科二级分类 经济史
文献摘要 This essay is about institutions and time. It does not provide a theory of economic dynamics comparable to general equilibrium theory. We do not have such a theory.1 Rather it provides the initial scaffolding of an analytical framework capable of increasing our understanding of the historical evolution of economies and a necessarily crude guide to policy in the ongoing task of improving the economic performance of economies. The analytical framework is a modification of neoclassical theory. What it retains is the fundamental assumption of scarcity and hence competition and the analytical tools of microeconomic theory. What it modifies is the rationality assumption. What it adds is the dimension of time.

Institutions form the incentive structure of a society, and the political and economic institutions, in consequence, are the underlying determinants of economic performance. Time as it relates to economic and societal change is the dimension in which the learning process of human beings shapes the way institutions evolve. That is, the beliefs that individuals, groups, and societies hold which determine choices are a consequence of learning through time - not just the span of an individual’s life or of a generation of a society, but the learning embodied in individuals, groups, and societies that is cumulative through time and passed on intergenerationally by the culture of a society.

The next two sections of this essay summarize the work I, and others, have done on the nature of institutions and the way they affect economic performance (Section II) and then characterize the nature of institutional change (Section III).2 The remaining four sections describe a cognitive-science approach to human learning (Section IV); provide an institutional/cognitive approach to economic history (Section V); indicate the implications of this approach for improving our understanding of the past (Section VI); and finally suggest implications for current development policies (Section VII).
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关键字 Economic Performance
发表所在刊物(或来源) American Economic Review,Vol. 84, No. 3, June 1994pp. 359-368
发表时间 1994-06-01
适用研究领域
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