Douglass North, Nobel Laureate in Economic sciences

Douglass North, the Nobel Laureate in Economics in 1993 and one of the most prominent economists calling for attention and support for the institutional sector within the economy.

North was born in 1920 in Cambridge, United States. His family was very mobile during his childhood because of his father's work with the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.

He began his education at Ottawa Elementary School, and then attended a private high school in New York City. For his university education, he attended Harvard University, and after moving to San Francisco, he attended the University of California until he got doctorate in economics and political science from the University itself in 1952.

North was fond of photography at the beginning of his life journey; this prompted him to receive many awards in some international competitions for university students.

He earned his first job as a professor at the University of Washington and served in several U.S. research institutions, serving as director at the Institute for Economic Research in 1961 and as director of the National Research Office for more than 20 years.

Douglass participated in World War II, and that time marked the beginning of a new journey of his career, in which he reviewed a lot of books and searched for himself until he found his desires in the study of economics, his first article in the Journal of Political Economics was entitled Location Theory and Regional Economic Growth.

He became one of the most prominent economists to advocate for the institutional stream within economics, which occupied so much of his thinking that most of his theoretical research was about the importance of institutions in economic development, and he advocated for institutional change in any development strategy as it is considered an essential pivot to the interpretation of economies' performance.

Furthermore, Douglass' vision was different from many economists. In his view, technical development following the industrial revolution was not conducive to economic development, and market prosperity was based on many elements, most notably the existence of legal and social institutions.

North received several prestigious awards, most notably: the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economics together with Robert Vogel, in honor of their theoretical contributions to economic history.

He authored some books and research in the field of economic history. His first book was “The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860”, which is a direct analysis of how markets operate, as well as his famous book “Institutional Change and American Economic Growth”. His last book was entitled “Understanding the Process of Economic Change”, 10 years later North left our World in 2015 in Michigan at the age of over 95.