Violence, Social Orders, and a Nobel Laureaute

Yesterday, I attended a book launch for the new book, Violence and Social Orders:

The Social Change Project at the Mercatus Center invites you to join us in congratulating Nobel laureate economist Douglass North and his co-authors, John J. Wallis and Barry Weingast, on the publication of their latest book, Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Recorded Human History (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

The book integrates the problem of violence into a larger social science and historical framework, showing how economic and political behaviors are closely linked. It compares "natural" to "modern" states and provides a framework for understanding the two types of social orders, why modern states are both politically and economically more developed, and how some 25 countries have made the transition between the two types.

I first met Douglass North at a conference about three years ago in DC and saw him in the audience at a presentation I attended in Fairfax this past Wednesday. Dr. North's work on the role institutions play in understanding economics is profound and something I hope to study in more detail. (My main motivation in attending law school was to get a better understanding for how legal institutions and rules affect individual behavior and societal outcomes.)

Dr. North won the Nobel Prize in 1993 and has to be one of the sharpest 88-year-olds I've ever heard. It was great to see him again.

P.S. -- You can read North's autobiography here. I find it strangely encouraging to know he made slightly above a "C" average as an undergrad.