Institutions, Transaction Costs and Productivity in the Long Run

Douglass C. North

Economic History from EconWPA

Abstract: The argument of this essay is that the immense productivity increases resulting from technological developments of the past century and a half could only be realized by fundamental changes in the institutional and organizational structure--a supply side argument; and that the consequent tensions induced by the resulting societal transformation have resulted (and are continuing to result) in politically-induced fundamental changes in the institutional structure to mitigate these tensions--a demand side argument. Both the supply side and demand side institutional changes have been and continue to be fundamental influences on productivity change.

JEL-codes: N (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1993-09-08
Note: 14 pages ascii text

Downloads: (external link)
http://129.3.20.41/eps/eh/papers/9309/9309004.pdf (application/pdf)
http://129.3.20.41/eps/eh/papers/9309/9309004.ps.gz (application/postscript)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpeh:9309004

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economic History from EconWPA
Series data maintained by EconWPA ().