Structure and Change: Douglass North's Economics

Douglass North is a pivotal figure in the development of the 'new' economic history as well as the 'new' institutional economics. However, the relationship between these two aspects of his thinking remains undeveloped in previous critical assessments of North's work. The relationship is clarified here. The evidence presented indicates that three distinct phases can be distinguished in his writings between the 1950s and the 2000s. The paper relates these changing views to the shifting mainstream within economics and the effects that this shift has in turn had on economic history research. Economic history has adapted to economic research by abandoning some practices associated with the earlier cliometric literature. Furthermore, North is unique to the extent that his recent writings represent something of a convergence with 'old' institutionalism. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.

Value-oriented impact assessment: the economics of a new approach to impact assessment

Environmental Impact Assessment has gained a prominent position as a tool to evaluate the environmental effects of economic activities. However, all approaches proposed so far use a burden-oriented logic. They concentrate on the different environmental impacts in order to ascertain the overall environmental damage caused by economic activity. This paper argues that such a burden-oriented view is (a) hampered by a series of methodological shortcomings which hinders its widespread use in practice; and (b) is analytically incomplete. The paper proposes a value-oriented approach to impact assessment. For this purpose an economic analysis of the optimal use of environmental and social resources is conducted from both a burden-oriented and a value-oriented standpoint. The basic logic of a value-oriented impact assessment is explained, as well as the resulting economic conditions for an optimal use of resources. In addition, it is shown that value- and burden-oriented approaches are complementary to achieve optimality. Finally, the paper discusses the conditions under which the use of burden- or value-oriented impact assessments is appropriate, respectively.