THE EVOLUTION OF EFFICIENT MARKETS IN HISTORY

Douglass North

Economic History from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: I take my text from Max Hartwell: "...but no historian has detailed the steps by which for example, the market economy was achieved in terms of government action or changing law; no historian has linked mercantilist with laissez-faire law to trace the chronology of legal and economic change. In this neglect, surely a major element for understanding of the industrial revolution has been overlooked." And Max might have added that in consequence of our failure to analyze how a market economy was achieved in history we have not been able to provide guidance for policy makers in the present world who are attempting to restructure failed centrally planned economies. A first step in meeting Max's challenge is to delineate the institutional characteristics of market economies in order that we may then explore their historical evolution.

JEL-codes: N (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1994-11-25
Note: ascii text, PostScript available, 3551 words
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/eh/papers/9411/9411005.pdf (application/pdf)
https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/eh/papers/9411/9411005.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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpeh:9411005

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economic History from University Library of Munich, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by EconWPA ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).