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Douglass C. North
Born	November 5, 1920 (1920-11-05) (age 87) Cambridge, Massachusetts
Residence	U.S.
Nationality	American
Field	Economics
Institutions	Washington University in St. Louis 1983- University of Washington 1950 - 1983 Cambridge University 1981
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley
Academic advisor	Melvin M. Knight
Known for	Economic history
Notable prizes	Nobel Prize in Economics (1993)

Douglass Cecil North (born November 5, 1920) is the co-recipient (with Robert William Fogel) of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economics and the Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. In the words of the Nobel Committee, North and Fogel were awarded the prize "for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change."

He was Professor of Economics at the University of Washington from 1950 - 1983. He joined the faculty of Washington University in Saint Louis in 1983 as the Henry R. Luce Professor of Law and Liberty in the Department of Economics, and served as director of the Center for Political Economy from 1984 to 1990. North held the position of Pitt Professor of American Institutions at Cambridge University in 1981. In 1992, he became the first economic historian to win one of the economics profession's most prestigious honors, the John R. Commons Award, which was established by the International Honors Society in Economics in 1965. North is currently at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University.

Along with Ronald Coase and Oliver Williamson, he helped found the International Society for the New Institutional Economics which held its first meeting in St. Louis in 1997. His current research includes property rights, transaction costs, and economic organization in history as well as economic development in developing countries.

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a B.A. in General Curriculum-Humanities in 1942 [1] and a Ph.D. in Economics in 1952, and joined the United States Merchant Marine during World War II. Prior to finishing his PhD, North had also been a semi-professional photographer and had worked with Dorothea Lange as well as other notable photographers.

North has served as an expert for the Copenhagen Consensus and as an advisor to governments around the world. He is currently engaged in research (co-authored with John J. Wallis of the University of Maryland and Barry Weingast of Stanford University) on how countries emerge out of what they call "the natural state" and into long-run economic growth.

He is a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security.

• The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860, Prentice Hall, 1961.
• Institutional Change and American Economic Growth, Cambridge University Press, 1971 (with Lance Davis).
• The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History, 1973 (with Robert Thomas).
• Growth and Welfare in the American Past, Prentice-Hall, 1974.
• Structure and Change in Economic History, Norton, 1981.
• Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge University Press, 1990.
• Empirical Studies in Institutional Change, Cambridge University Press, 1996 (edited with Lee Alston & Thrainn Eggertsson).
• Understanding the Process of Economic Change, Princeton University Press, 2005.

• 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics
• CNISS
• Hoover Institution homepage
• Douglass C. North – Autobiography