Institutional Change and American Economic Growth

by Lance E. Davis, Douglass C. North

This book presents a model for examining problems of institutional change and applies it to American economic development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The authors develop their model of institutional change. They argue that if external economic factors make an increase in income possible but not attainable within the existing institutional structure, new organizations must be developed to achieve the potential in income. Their model is designed to explain the type and timing of these necessary changes in institutional organization. Individual, voluntary cooperative, and governmental arrangements are included in the discussion, although the latter differs considerably from the first two.

Hardcover

First published September 24, 1971

About the author

Lance Edwin Davis was the Mary Stillman Harkness Professor of Social Science at the California Institute of Technology. He researched the economic history of financial markets and institutional and technological change.