Contrary to the strawman “classical” model of the textbooks, the original classical economists did not believe that money-stock changes affect only the price level and not real output and employment. Most classicals saw money as having powerful short-run real effects and perhaps some...

Douglass North earned a share of the 1993 Nobel prize for economics for two decades of research that culminated in the development of an innovative framework for analyzing economic history. This review essay discusses the book that most comprehensively presents North's paradigm, which...