Douglass C. North: The answer is "transactions costs"

Michael C. Munger found during conducting economic research that professor Douglass C. North emphasized on the concept of transactions costs as an answer to most of the economic problems, suggesting that transactions costs played a central role in solving most of the economic questions. The problem was that ideology cannot be both a summary, an information shortcut, which would have to be correct on average, and a substitute for facts and reason. Once one recognized that institutional arrangements were in part the product of and in part supported ex post by ideologies, the rational choice view of mass politics became much harder to sustain. This recognition led Doug on a path that took him away from traditional economics, which adopted its own ideological requirement that incentives, not tastes, must be the force that animated choices and changes in choices.

Duke Scholars

Author Michael C. Munger Political Science