一个制度经济学家 。。。。。

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglass_North
Douglass North was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on November 5, 1920. North moved several times as a child due to his father's work at MetLife, living in Cambridge, Ottawa, Lausanne, New York City and Wallingford.

North was educated at The Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut. He was accepted at Harvard at the same time that his father became the head of MetLife on the west coast, so North opted to go to University of California, Berkeley. In 1942, he graduated with a B.A. in General Curriculum-Humanities. Although his grades amounted to slightly better than a "C" average, he managed to complete a triple major in political science, philosophy and economics.

A conscientious objector in World War II, North became a navigator in the Merchant Marine, traveling between San Francisco and Australia. During this time, he read economics and picked up his hobby of photography. He taught navigation at the Maritime Service Officers' School in Alameda during the last year of the war, and struggled with the decision of whether to become a photographer or an economist.[1]

North decided to return to school at Berkeley to pursue a PhD in economics. He finished his studies in 1952 and began work as an assistant professor at the University of Washington. He was Professor of Economics at the University of Washington from 1950 - 1983. He joined the faculty of Washington University in Saint Louis in 1983 as the Henry R. Luce Professor of Law and Liberty in the Department of Economics, and served as director of the Center for Political Economy from 1984 to 1990. North held the position of Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University in 1981. In 1991, he became the first economic historian to win the John R. Commons Award [2], which was established by the International Honors Society for Economics in 1965.

North has served as an expert for the Copenhagen Consensus and as an advisor to governments around the world. He is currently engaged in research (with John J. Wallis of the University of Maryland, College Park and Barry Weingast of Stanford University) on how countries emerge from what they call "the natural state" and into long-run economic growth. He is a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security and a special adviser to the non-profit organization Vipani.

North is currently teaching at Washington University in St. Louis and is the Bartlett Burnap Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University [3].

[edit] Current work
Along with Ronald Coase and Oliver Williamson, he helped found the International Society for the New Institutional Economics which held its first meeting in St. Louis in 1997. His current research includes property rights, transaction costs, and economic organization in history as well as economic development in developing countries.

[edit] Major publications
Location Theory and Regional Economic Growth, Journal of Political Economy 63(3):243-258, 1955
The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860, Prentice Hall, 1961.
Institutional Change and American Economic Growth, Cambridge University Press, 1971 (with Lance Davis).
The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History, 1973 (with Robert Thomas).
Growth and Welfare in the American Past, Prentice-Hall, 1974.
Structure and Change in Economic History, Norton, 1981.
Institutions and economic growth: An historical introduction, Elsevier, 1989
Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England, Cambridge University Press, 1989
Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Institutions, 1991, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 97-112
Economic Performance through Time, American Economic Association, 1994
Empirical Studies in Institutional Change, Cambridge University Press, 1996 (edited with Lee Alston & Thrainn Eggertsson).
Understanding the Process of Economic Change, Princeton University Press, 2005.
Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History, Cambridge University Press, 2009 (with John Joseph Wallis and Barry R. Weingast).

诺斯的学术研究与成就贡献
　　诺斯是新经济史的先驱者、开拓者和抗议者。诺斯“始终如一地站在近些年来席卷经济史学界的新浪潮的最前沿，而这股浪潮试图将新古典经济学应用于悬而未决的经济史问题”（马克•布劳格语）。经过多年的苦心经营，诺斯所在的华盛顿大学已经变成了新经济史学派、新制度学派和新政治学派的学术中心。

　　诺斯的主要贡献在于研究方法上的创新，即用古典经济学的方法研究新的对象。也就是说，运用新古典经济学和经济计量学来研究经济史问题。在其早期对远洋运输和美国国际收支所做的研究中，他与福格尔所代表的新经济史学派并驾齐驱，将新古典生产理论与经济史中所发现的数据结合起来。这种新的方法对经济史的研究发生了革命性的变革。诺斯并不满足于此，他又利用产权理论来解释美国历史中制度变革对经济绩效的影响。诺斯的早期著作，诸如《美国从1790年至1860年的经济增长》、《美国过去的增长与福利：新经济史》等等，对此作了充分的反映。从20世纪80年代开始，诺斯又运用新制度经济学派的产权理论，分析西方世界最近两个世纪中工业化的更为一般的理论。其目的是探讨西方世界经济增长的原因，经济增长与制度变迁的内在联系，产权制度与经济发展的互动趋势，经济发展对制度的内在要求。诺斯这一方面的著作主要有《西方世界的兴起》、《制度变革与美国经济绩效》等等。进入20世纪90年代以后，诺斯开始总结他30多年研究经济史的经验，从中提炼出一些对经济学尤其是对新制度经济学有重要贡献的理论。在这一方面他的著作主要有《制度、制度绩效与经济增长》。由于建立了包括产权理论、国家理论和意识形态理论在内的“制度变迁理论”，获得1993年诺贝尔经济学奖。

　　概括起来说，诺斯对经济学的贡献主要包括三个方面。

　　第一，用制度经济学的方法来解释历史上的经济增长。

　　第二，作为新制度经济学的开创者之一，诺斯重新论证了包括产权制度在内的制度的作用。

　　第三，作为经济学家的诺斯将新古典经济学中所没有涉及的内容——制度，作为内生变量运用到经济研究中去。特别是将产权制度、意识形态、国家、伦理道德等作为经济演进和经济发展的变量，极大的发展了制度变迁理论。

[编辑]诺斯的主要著作和论文
　　一、诺斯的主要著作有：
《1790—1860年的美国经济增长》
《美国过去的增长与福利：新经济史》
《制度变化与美国的经济增长》（与戴维斯合著）
《西方世界的兴起：新经济史》（与托马斯合著）
《经济史中的结构与变迁》
　　二、诺斯的主要论文有：
《经济史》
《1600—1850年海洋运输生产率的变化的原由》
《西方世界成长的经济理论》
《第一次经济革命》
《结构与绩效：经济史的任务》。


他的书《西方世界的兴起》是里程碑式的作品。

他的书《西方世界的兴起》是里程碑式的作品。

非常著名的经济学家

谢谢大家啊