Three US-based academics – Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson – have won the 2024 Nobel Economics Prize, “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity”, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said on Monday, October 14.
Acemoglu and Johnson work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Robinson at the University of Chicago.
The professors have researched the connection between the societal institutions created by colonisers and the current state of wealth inequality among countries across the globe.
“Reducing the vast differences in income between countries is one of our time’s greatest challenges,” Jakob Svensson, Chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences, said in a statement . “The laureates have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for achieving this.”
The colonists set up institutions which ultimately benefited themselves. “The aim, in some places, was to exploit the indigenous population and extract resources for the colonisers’ benefit,” the statement reads, attributing to the research. “In others, the colonisers formed inclusive political and economic systems for the long term benefit of European migrants.”
The laureates have argued that such institutions can be one of the reasons not only for differences in countries’ prosperity, but in reversal of their fortunes before and after being colonised as well. While inclusive institutions would create long-term benefits for everyone, some countries have become trapped in the extractive institutions which only provide short-term gains for the people in power.
Born 1967 in Istanbul, Turkey, Acemoglu is a PhD from London School of Economics and Political Science.
Similarly, Johnson, who was born in 1963 in Sheffield, UK, is a PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
And, the oldest among the three, Robinson, who was born 1960 is a PhD from Yale University.
The economics prize wraps up this year’s Nobel season, which honoured achievements in artificial intelligence for the physics and chemistry prizes, while the Peace Prize went to Japanese group Nihon Hidankyo, committed to fighting nuclear weapons.
South Korea's Han Kan won the literature prize -- the only woman laureate this year -- while the medicine prize lauded discoveries in understanding gene regulation.
The Nobel Prizes consist of a diploma, a gold medal and a one-million-dollar lump sum.
They will be presented at ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist and prize creator Alfred Nobel.
(With inputs from AFP/RSS)