Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson win Nobel economics prize for 2024
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson have won the 2024 Nobel economics prize for their work on how institutions are formed and affect prosperity, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said on Monday.
The award, which is known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, is worth 11 million Swedish crowns, or about $1.1 million dollars.
Reacting to the news, Acemoglu said: “I am delighted. It’s just a shock and amazing news.”
Acemoglu and Johnson are professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Robinson is a professor at the University of Chicago.
Commenting on this year’s award, Nobel economics prize committee member Jan Teorell said: “Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson have both made an empirical and theoretical contribution that has hugely impacted research in these fields.” He added: “[T]heir insights show us that work on promoting democracy and inclusive institutions is an important way forward for promoting economic development and closing the world income gap.”
Responding to questions to journalists, Acemoglu noted that his research, alongside follow-up work with Pascual Restrepo, Suresh Naidu and James Robinson found that countries that democratize starting from a non-democratic regime do ultimately grow in about 8-9 years faster than non-democratic regimes.
“Broadly speaking, the work that we have done favors democracy. And in follow-up work that I have done with Pascual Restrepo, we specifically look at the democracy problem as well, and find that, and it’s a substantial gain,” said Acemoglu.
Last year’s Nobel Prize in economics was won by Harvard economic historian Claudia Goldin for her work on gender and labor. In 2022, three US economists–Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig–won the award for their work analyzing systemic risk in the banking sector.
Other previous recipients include Friedrich August von Hayek, Milton Friendman, and Paul Krugman. The youngest ever person to receive the prize for economics was Esther Duflo, at the age of 46.
The economics award was not one of the initial prizes for science, literature and peace created in the will of Alfred Nobel, but was established and funded by Sweden’s central bank in 1968.