Individual actions are governed by interests shaped by relative prices, endowments, and constraints (institutions) as well as by perceptions of how the world around us works (cognition and beliefs). He always operated within a framework of individuals who act intentionally (neoclassical economics matters) and who perceive the world through cognitive lenses that are part inherited from their culture and part derived from their own experience (history matters). He criticised both disciplines for their complacency about the adequacy of the current conceptual and methodological consensus on how history or economics should be done. North long emphasised the importance of history and of neoclassical economics. And then realising the incompleteness of the neoclassical tools for understanding long-term change, he was a leader of a generation of economists and social scientists who brought the importance of institutions into a central position within economics – the ‘new’ institutional economics. North was a leader of the generation of economic historians who brought neoclassical economics directly into the study of history – the ‘new’ economic history. He will be deeply missed by his family, friends, colleagues, and students. He was among the most important and influential economic historians and economists of the late 20th century. North recently passed away at the age of 95 at his home in Benzonia, Michigan.
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