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The number of university students exhibiting mental health concerns have surged considerably in the past decade. Amongst a number of potential contributing factors, this study aims to assess the role of a broader societal phenomenon; the shift in emphasis in our interactions from the physical to the virtual environments. Specifically, a decrease in nature contact and a contrasting increase in smartphone use are identified as two pathways in which this shift may impact negatively on mental health. Previous research evidences both facets as consistent correlates of depression, although limited research extends these associations to the student population or attempts to establish an interaction between the two.

The current study recruited a sample of 380 first-year undergraduate students, via an online survey, to assess if problematic smartphone use (SAS-SV) and nature contact (NCQ) were significant predictors of depression (PHQ-9).

Nature contact frequency and smartphone use were significant predictors of depression.

This is the first study to concurrently assess the impact of smartphone use and nature contact in a student population.

The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.

In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.