Structure and Change in Economic History

Rating:
Summary: A must read.... I suppose....
Review: Although this is an important book from the 1993 Nobel Prizewinner in Economics, and a text that capably and fully illustrates what it sets out to do at its outset, I hesitate to recommend it universally for reasons that aren't fully clear to me.....

Certainly, this is a book that should be read by students of economic histroy and political economy. It illustrates how social changes (i.e. changes in property rights) lead to seemingly unrelated changes across the whole of society. It is well-written. Perhaps you should buy this book....

Rating:
Summary: A must read.... I suppose....
Review: Although this is an important book from the 1993 Nobel Prizewinner in Economics, and a text that capably and fully illustrates what it sets out to do at its outset, I hesitate to recommend it universally for reasons that aren't fully clear to me.....

Certainly, this is a book that should be read by students of economic histroy and political economy. It illustrates how social changes (i.e. changes in property rights) lead to seemingly unrelated changes across the whole of society. It is well-written. Perhaps you should buy this book....

Rating:
Summary: Institutions as Panacea
Review: In this book North modifies the rationality assumption of neoclassical theory and puts individuals into a more complex framework of decision-making. According to my reading, this new model is characterized by an emphasis on incentive constrains (structures/institutions) and a dynamic process of learning (both individual and collective).

But here North runs into a problem with the infamous structure/agency dichotomy. That is, he means to rise above methodological individualism by incorporating a broad, deterministic social "structure" into his analysis -- "by structure I mean those characteristics of a society which we believe to be the basic determinants of performance" (3). However, he also seems to chalk a great deal of explanatory power up to individual leadership, calculation and rationality: the state specifying rules of the game to maximize rents (24) and also: "throughout history, individuals given a choice between a state-however exploitative it might be-and anarchy, have decided for the former" (24). But if there's such a powerful structure, then can individuals really "choose" their fate? How much leeway is there for strategic calculation? On page 32 he seems to say that the masses have no power to choose: "institutional innovation will always come from rulers rather than constituents since the latter would always face the free rider problem". Is North's structure (and institutions) merely an aggregation of the choices of masses of agents, or is it the strategic choices of a few ruling principals and their agents, or is it the evolution of an impersonal body of culture, ideas, law, etc., or is it all three? And if it's all three, then is he trying to incorporate too much into the concept of "institutions", until they become tautological? What CANNOT be an institution under his definition, and if everything is an institution, then how can we formulate testable, falsifiable hypotheses about social change?

North defines institutions as "the humanly devised constrains that construct human interaction" (p. 344); or, the rules of the game in a society. Thus, it is clear that North is trying to provide an explanation of the dynamic interaction among many factors, which is always a difficult task. But he is to be commended for modifying neoclassical thought in this provocative new way, potentially opening a path for a whole new research agenda in the social sciences.

Rating:
Summary: Institutions as Panacea
Review: In this book North modifies the rationality assumption of neoclassical theory and puts individuals into a more complex framework of decision-making. According to my reading, this new model is characterized by an emphasis on incentive constrains (structures/institutions) and a dynamic process of learning (both individual and collective).

But here North runs into a problem with the infamous structure/agency dichotomy. That is, he means to rise above methodological individualism by incorporating a broad, deterministic social "structure" into his analysis -- "by structure I mean those characteristics of a society which we believe to be the basic determinants of performance" (3). However, he also seems to chalk a great deal of explanatory power up to individual leadership, calculation and rationality: the state specifying rules of the game to maximize rents (24) and also: "throughout history, individuals given a choice between a state-however exploitative it might be-and anarchy, have decided for the former" (24). But if there's such a powerful structure, then can individuals really "choose" their fate? How much leeway is there for strategic calculation? On page 32 he seems to say that the masses have no power to choose: "institutional innovation will always come from rulers rather than constituents since the latter would always face the free rider problem". Is North's structure (and institutions) merely an aggregation of the choices of masses of agents, or is it the strategic choices of a few ruling principals and their agents, or is it the evolution of an impersonal body of culture, ideas, law, etc., or is it all three? And if it's all three, then is he trying to incorporate too much into the concept of "institutions", until they become tautological? What CANNOT be an institution under his definition, and if everything is an institution, then how can we formulate testable, falsifiable hypotheses about social change?

North defines institutions as "the humanly devised constrains that construct human interaction" (p. 344); or, the rules of the game in a society. Thus, it is clear that North is trying to provide an explanation of the dynamic interaction among many factors, which is always a difficult task. But he is to be commended for modifying neoclassical thought in this provocative new way, potentially opening a path for a whole new research agenda in the social sciences.

Rating:
Summary: theory covering eight millenia of economic history
Review: Professor North's work is divided into two parts. The first briefly outlines a theory of structural change of institutions through time. North argues that the most interesting aspects of economic history involve assumptions that standard, neoclassical economic theory holds contant. In particular, North argues that "The physiography and resources of the regions together with the state of military technology played decisive roles in determining the size and characteristics of the state and in shaping the forms of economic organization" (pg. 64), and that those forms overcome shirking, known as the Free Rider Problem, through the elaboration of a dominant ideology. It is just such considerations that neoclassical theory cannot account for in its model of the utilitarian actor and yet which are so vital in understanding the essential elements of economic history (rather than economics) - structure and change.

The second part applies the ideas of the first to a few thousand years of human history. At least that is the aim. It is actually little more than a brief recounting of major events in world, particularly Western history. North starts with the so-called First Economic Revolution; that is, mankind's switch from a primarily hunter/gatherer existence to one based mostly on agriculture. He then moves through the decline of the ancient world, spending most all of his time on the fall of the Roman Empire. From there he covers the rise of western Europe and then the American economy at the turn of the last century.

It is this second part that is the book's weakest link. North should either have spent more time discussing how his theory relates to the event he surveys or let the reader apply the theory on her own and left the historical essays out entirely. As they stand, they are little more than brief reviews in "benchmark" and tired historical events. It would have been interesting, for instance, to see how Roman economic institutions and its ideology of stoicism compared with the Ch'in dynasty and confucianism, or of the role that "physiography" - a word used but never discussed - played in the differing development of each. Here North seems much less willing to speculate.

His theory also leaves a little to be desired. By explaining innovation merely as a result of the development of communal, and then personal property rights, he can make the scientist and historian of science shudder. He argues for the central role of structure in forging economic systems and the dominant order, but seems merely to assume that no structure existed in early hunter/gatherer bands - that they were models of egalitarianism. Such ideas run counter to a lot of accumulating evidence that man, like all social mammals, has a basic social structure "hardwired" in us. It is not clear how such knowledge would effect the formation of early "states" as North describes them.

But all criticisms aside, the book is well-written and the discussions, if they cannot lay all controversy to rest, certainly give the reader an excellent introduction to the economic history of man. Given the spate of less-than-rigorous books on the subject that have been published of late, this one is a welcome breath of fresh air.

Rating:
Summary: Structure and Change in Economic History
Review: This book aims to explain the structure and evolution of institutions. The author, Nobel laureate Douglass North, concludes that the tension between gains from specialization and attendant costs is "the basic source of structure and change in economic history." Institutions arise to exploit the gains from division of labor or to reduce transaction costs. This theory appears to offer considerable economy and power of explanation.

North asserts that, in the prehistoric era, human population increase would lead to declining labor productivity as resources were exhausted. New technologies could increase productivity but, if property rights were nonexclusive, as they must have been in a nomadic hunter-gatherer society, new technologies would simply accelerate resource depletion. Only if a tribe or band could exclude rivals from exploiting the resource, as they could in a settled agricultural society, would the productivity gains from new technology be sustained. The advantage that agriculture offered, then, was the opportunity to establish exclusive communal property rights. This produced what North calls the first economic revolution.

The first economic revolution, occasioned by the rise of agriculture, produced the state, "the most fundamental achievement of the ancient world." The state specialized in providing security, keeping order within societies and protecting them from outside threats, while the complex demands of an agricultural economy (compared to those of a hunter-gatherer economy) required increased specialization throughout the rest of society as well. Over time, new military technologies led to larger states and more representative forms of government as rulers were forced to make concessions to their constituents to compete militarily with other rulers.

The industrial revolution, which North refers to as the second economic revolution, was largely a result of better specified and enforced property rights that raised the private returns to invention and led to an invention "industry." The industrial revolution brought tremendous gains in the standard of living but required new institutions to achieve gains from specialization without losing them to attendant transaction costs.

North notes that transaction costs would be prohibitive without a normative system that encourages compliance with contractual obligations. Accordingly, concurrent with the industrial revolution, we see a concerted effort by elites to inculcate the values of hard work, thrift, and sobriety among the working classes. In fact, North has reflected deeply on the role of ideology in an industrial society. Changes in knowledge and technology affect relative prices and thus affect perceptions of fairness. Differences in occupation or geographic location also give rise to different perceptions of how output should be distributed. "Ideological entrepreneurs" capitalize on these different perceptions. Successful ideologies must provide an explanation of history that plausibly accounts for current conditions. Ideologies must be flexible so that they can attract new adherents and accommodate changed conditions. Most importantly, to effect change, successful ideologies must overcome the free rider problem. Their ability to do so will be inversely related to the legitimacy of existing institutions.

An interesting question asked early on in the book is, why do states persistently fail to establish property rights that would permit high rates of economic growth? He explains that states first maximize returns for the ruler and then, subject to this constraint, try to reduce transaction costs throughout the economy. Where the ruler is an individual or the representative of a small elite group, the interests of rulers will not normally coincide with those of society as a whole.

Structure and Change in Economic History offers considerable insight into fundamental historical forces. It will come as no surprise to those who have read this work that North won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1993 for his use of economic theory and quantitative methods to explain economic and institutional change.