• Professor, Economics
• Professor, History

Douglass North

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Promoting U.S.-China business relations WUSTL conference explores U.S.-China business relations, intellectual property issues, May 11-13 May 5, 2006 -- "U.S.-China Business Relations" is the focus of a three-day academic symposium that kicks off with a public conference from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. May 11 in Room 311, Anheuser-Busch Hall. U.S.-China commercial relations and intellectual property rights are among topics to be covered.

Copenhagen consensus Nobel Laureate Douglass North seeks consensus on solving global woes June 1, 2004 -- North Download Douglass C. North, Ph.D., the Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts & Sciences and a co-recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, joined a panel of distinguished economists in Denmark May 24-28th for an intensive forum exploring the costs and benefits of ongoing efforts to address critical global challenges, such as war, famine and disease.

Scholars to gather Nov. 13 ?The Future of Freedom? to be topic of ?Conversation? Nov. 5, 2003 -- "The Future of Freedom" will be the topic of "Conversation" when scholars gather Nov. 13 at Washington University for the second of a four-part series of discussions on key issues that will affect the future of the university, the community and the world. Arts & Sciences is sponsoring the four "Conversations," which are free and open to the public, as part of the university's 150th anniversary celebration. "The Future of Freedom Conversation" will be held from 10 to 11:30 a.m. in Graham Chapel.

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Order in the jungle - Economics and the rule of law The Economist March 17, 2008 -- Article refers to the theory of WUSTL economist Douglass North and his view that stable, predictable laws encourage investment and growth.

Barrio study links land ownership to a better life Wall Street Journal Nov. 9, 2005 -- Story on the San Francisco Solano study, a provocative research project that examines if land ownership lifts people out of poverty. The study was conducted by two Argentine universities and Harvard Business School. The researchers found that landownership status seemed to make no difference in employment or income. But it did seem to affect the way residents spent their money, and their aspirations and expectations. WUSTL Nobel Prize-winning economist Douglass North, a specialist in property rights, comments.

Experts are at a loss on investing Los Angeles Times May 11, 2005 -- A growing body of research shows that millions of Americans fail to get even the most elementary investment decisions right. Douglass C. North, an economist at WUSTL, won the Nobel Prize in 1993 for work on the importance of institutions in fostering growth. However, in deciding how to invest his prize money, he trusted his gut rather than institutions. He concluded that the stock market had peaked, and poured the money into low-interest municipal bonds. When stocks confounded his predictions by doubling in value, he said, "my wife spent years berating me." Still, he hung onto the bonds, and stock prices eventually reversed course. Chief among the rewards he said he collected: "My wife quit berating me."

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, North graduated with a triple bachelor's degree in political science, philosophy and economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1942, and later, in 1952, earned a doctorate in economics there. He served as a U.S. Merchant Marine from 1941 to 1946.

North began his academic career at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he spent 33 years as a member of the economics faculty, including a 12-year tenure as department chair and five years as director of the Institute for Economic Research.

He was the Peterkin Professor of Political Economics at Rice University in 1979, Pitt Professor of American Institutions at Cambridge University in 1981, and Visiting Fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University in 1987-88. He has been a visiting scholar at Stanford's Hoover Institution since 1995.

North joined Washington University in 1983 as the Henry R. Luce Professor of Law and Liberty in the Department of Economics in Arts & Sciences, and served as director of the Center in Political Economy here from 1984 to 1990.

In 1987, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and, in 1992, he became the first economic historian ever to win one of the economics profession's most prestigious honors, the John R. Commons Award. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in July 1996 and installed as Washington University's Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts & Sciences in October 1996. He received the University's William Greenleaf Eliot Society "Search" Award in April 2002.

North is the author of 10 books, including Growth and Welfare in the American Past, 1966; The Rise of the Western World (with Robert P. Thomas) 1973; Structure and Change in Economic History, 1981; and Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, 1990. His most recent research is forthcoming in a book titled The Process of Economic Change.

His research has focused on the formation of political and economic institutions and the consequences of these institutions on the performance of economies through time, including such areas as property rights, transaction costs, and the free rider problem.

Currently, he is deeply involved in the new and growing branch of economics called institutional economics, which draws heavily on his work and that of fellow Nobel laureate Ronald Coase. In 1999, North founded the Center for New Institutional Social Sciences at Washington University to foster research into the evolution of social, political and economic institutions that shape societies and economies around the world.

For the last 15 years, North and his wife, Elisabeth Case, have spent summers in northern Michigan. He works on research all morning, hikes with his dog, plays tennis or goes swimming in the afternoons, and often spends evenings listening to music at the nearby Interlochen Music Camp.

"It is a wonderful place for that mixture of research and leisure which has made my life such a rich experience," North notes in a brief biographical sketch.

"I would be remiss if I left the impression that my life has been totally preoccupied with scholarly research," he writes in closing.

"True, it has been the fundamental focus of my life, but it has been intermingled with a variety of activities that have complemented that central preoccupation and enriched my life. I continue to be a photographer; I have enjoyed fishing and hunting with a close friend; and have owned two ranches, first in northern California and then in the state of Washington. I learned to fly an airplane, and had my own airplane during the 1960s. I have always taken seriously good food and wine. In addition, music has continued to be an important part of my life."