The Nobel Committee announces the winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics during a press conference at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, on October 14, 2024. The 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson for their work on institution building and their impact on welfare.
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US-based economists Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson were awarded the Nobel Prize in economics on Monday for their work on wealth inequality between nations.
The academics helped show why societies with “poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better,” the Nobel committee said, demonstrating the “importance of social institutions to a country’s well-being.”
Acemoglu and Johnson are professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while Robinson is director of the University of Chicago’s Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts with a focus on the economies of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.
Simon Johnson, economist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
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Acemoglu and Robinson wrote the popular 2012 book “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty,” which explores the roots of inequality and why some countries successfully acquire wealth and influence.
The richest 20 percent of countries are now about 30 times richer than the poorest 20 percent, the Nobel committee noted in its statement, with the former expanding its wealth while the latter category of nations fails to close the gap.
The laureates helped explain how the political and economic systems introduced by colonizing countries from the 16th century onwards play a key role in this inequality — and that places that were the richest at the time of colonization in relative terms are now among the poorest , the committee said.
“They have pioneered new approaches, both empirical and theoretical, that have greatly enhanced our understanding of global inequality,” Jakob Svensson, director and professor of economics at Stockholm University’s Institute for International Economic Studies, said during a press conference. .
The question of why the gaps between poor and rich nations are so persistent is not new, but remains “among the most urgent in the social sciences,” he added.
The winners of the prize, officially called the “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel”, will receive 11 million Swedish kroner ($1.058 million) from the Swedish central bank.
The prize money will be shared equally among the winners – as was previously the case in 2022, when the reward was split between US-based economists Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig for research into banks and financial crises.
Economist and historian Claudia Goldin won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics for advancing understanding of women’s earnings and labor market outcomes.
British economist James A. Robinson, a professor at the University of Chicago, speaks in his presentation during the Camacol Congress 2018 on June 8, 2018 in Cartagena, Colombia.
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The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded last week to Japanese atomic bomb survivor organization Nihon Hidankyo, in recognition of its efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
The other Nobel Prizes, first awarded in 1901, are in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicineand literature.
The economics prize was established in 1968 in honor of the 300th anniversary of the Swedish central bank and was awarded for the first time a year later. The winner is chosen by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in recognition of work of “outstanding importance”.