In this essay I propose to explore what we can and cannot learn about the way economies evolve over time. The focus of the essay is on the dynamics of change--political, social, and of course economic; and therefore the key word is time. In section I I outline the process of economic change as I...

In an earlier essay (North, 1981, Ch. 3) I developed a "Neo-Classical Theory of the State". This essay elaborates, extends and modifies that essay in three directions: 1. it incorporates time into the model; 2. it is explicitly concerned with the perceptions--the belief systems--that determine...

In this essay I would like to apply the new institutional economics to suggest modifications of the theory we employ in economics to make that theory useful for the study of the performance of economies through time. The modifications I shall suggest are in the spirit of Joseph Schumpeter