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.

International order flows: Explaining equity and exchange rate returns

Macroeconomic models of equity and exchange rate returns perform poorly at high frequencies. The proportion of daily returns that these models explain is essentially zero. Instead of relying on macroeconomic determinants, we model equity price and exchange rate behavior based on a concept from microstructure – order flow. The international order flows are derived from belief changes of different investor groups in a two-country setting. We obtain a structural relationship between equity returns, exchange rate returns and their relationship to home and foreign equity market order flow. To test the model we construct daily aggregate order flow data from 800 million equity trades in the U.S. and France from 1999 to 2003. Almost 60% of the daily returns in the S&P100 index are explained jointly by exchange rate returns and aggregate order flows in both markets. As predicted by the model, daily exchange rate returns and order flow into the French market have significant incremental explanatory power for the daily S&P returns. The model implications are also validated for intraday returns.

Young children returning home from care: The birth parents' perspective

While a wide range of literature exists on the experiences of children in foster care or adoption, much less is known about children who return home from care to their birth parents. This paper focuses on the perspectives of a small sample of birth parents of young children who returned home from care. It draws on findings from the Northern Ireland Care Pathways and Outcomes Study that has been following a population (n = 374) of children who were under 5 years and in care in Northern Ireland on the 31st of March 2000. As part of this study, interviews were conducted with the foster parents of 55 children, the adoptive parents of 51 children and the birth parents of nine children who had returned home from care. The paper explores the birth parents’ views on how they coped while their child was in care, how they were coping after the child had returned home and how their child was faring at home. Results revealed that these parents, and their children, were experiencing multiple difficulties and struggled to cope after the children had returned home.