Geneva, 25 February 2003 -
Nobel prize winner Professor
Douglass C. North of the United
States will give the ECE 2003 Myrdal
Lecture, in a series of lectures
devoted to major international economic
problems. His lecture, entitled
"The Role of Institutions in Economic
Development", will take place at
the Palais des Nations (Salle XX)
at 4.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 5 March
2003.
Professor North was awarded the
Nobel Prize in economics in 1993
for ground-breaking research in
economic history that integrated
economics, sociology, statistics
and history to explain economic
and institutional change and the
role institutions play in economic
growth. Professor North is one of
the pioneers of "the new institutional
economics".
The lecture series is named in
honour of Gunnar Myrdal, distinguished
social scientist, and first Executive
Secretary of the ECE (1947-1957),
who himself received the Nobel Prize
in economics in 1974. Like Professor
North, Gunnar Myrdal also emphasized
strongly the interdependence of
economic, social, political and
institutional factors in his research.
Institutions are the formal and
informal sets of rules that govern
the behaviour of human beings in
a society and shape economic performance.
Professor North has shown that,
depending on their structure and
enforcement, institutional arrangements
can either foster or restrain economic
development. A key institutional
factor that stimulates economic
development is the creation and
enforcement of efficient property
rights. But changing institutions
is a slow process as they are rooted
in the social values, norms and
traditions of a society. The copying
of formal legal and economic rules
of successful economies is therefore
no guarantee for improved economic
performance, because they can be
made effective only as a result
of a longer process of learning-by-doing
and behavioural adaptation. The
experience of the former centrally
planned economies of the ECE region,
which after the revolutions of 1989
had to replace a large part of their
institutional and organizational
capital, provides important evidence
in support of institutional economics
as developed in the work of Professor
North. The central role of institution-building
for the transition process towards
market economy systems was also
emphasized in the UNECE Economic
Survey of Europe in 1989-1990.
Professor North has had a very
long and distinguished career in
scholarly research, dating from
the 1950s. He has lectured at most
major American and European universities,
and held positions at Cambridge
University and Stanford University.
Since 1983, Professor North has
been at Washington University, St.
Louis, Missouri where he is currently
Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts
and Sciences as well as a professor
of history and a fellow of the Center
in Political Economy. Professor
North was a member of the Board
of Directors of the United States'
National Bureau of Economic Research
for twenty-five years until 1986.
He is also Senior Fellow at the
Hoover Institution, Stanford University,
Palo Alto, California. He was elected
to the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences in 1987 and has been
a fellow of the British Academy
since 1996.
Professor North has published
several important books, including
Institutions, Institutional Change
and Economic Performance, Structure
and Change in Economic History,
and The Rise of the Western World:
A New Economic History (with R.
Thomas).