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The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.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

The primary objective of this research is to provide evidence that there are two distinct layers of investor sentiments that can affect asset valuation models. The first is general market-wide sentiments, while the second is biased approaches toward specific assets.

To achieve the goal, the authors conducted a multi-step analysis of stock returns and constructed complex sentiment indices that reflect the optimism or pessimism of stock market participants. The authors used panel regression with fixed effects and a sample of the US stock market to improve the explanatory power of the three-factor models.

The analysis showed that both market-level and stock-level sentiments have significant contributions, although they are not equal. The impact of stock-level sentiments is more profound than market-level sentiments, suggesting that neglecting the stock-level sentiment proxies in asset valuation models may lead to severe deficiencies.

In contrast to previous studies, the authors propose that investor sentiments should be measured using a multi-level factor approach rather than a single-factor approach. The authors identified two distinct levels of investor sentiment: general market-wide sentiments and individual stock-specific sentiments.

Social responsibility (SR) has become critical in facilitating the sustainability of new infrastructure construction (NIC) and is also a nonnegligible aspect in its management. Although studies attempting to explore this issue from various and disparate perspectives have become increasingly popular, no consensus has yet been reached regarding what SR factors affect NIC management. This paper aims to establish an inventory of SR factors for NIC and reveal a comprehensive framework for SR of NIC (NIC-SR) management through an in-depth analysis of the relationships among factors.

This article proposes a mixed-review method that combines the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses and content analysis methods as a solution.

From 62 chosen publications on NIC-SR published in peer-reviewed journals between 2010 and 2022, a total of 44 SR factors were found. These 44 SR factors were divided into 4 interconnected categories: political, ethics-environmental, legal and economic. Based on the interactions among SR factors and incorporating the impact of the four categories of SR factors on NIC management, an integrated framework from micro to macro was developed.

This paper educates researchers and practitioners about the SR factors that must be considered to improve the sustainability of NIC management and provides practical implications for architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) practices. Furthermore, it serves as an impetus for governments to improve their programs and policies and fulfill social responsibilities.