Three U.S.-based academics won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics Monday for their investigation into why global inequality persists, especially in countries plagued by corruption and dictatorships.
Simon Johnson and James Robinson, both Anglo-Americans, and Turkish-American Daron Acemoglu were praised for their work on “how institutions shape and affect prosperity”. Swedish Academy of Sciences said
“Reducing the huge income disparity between countries is one of the biggest challenges of our time. The winners demonstrate the importance of social institutions in achieving this goal”, said Jacob Svensson, Chairman of the Economic Sciences Prize Committee.
“They identify the historical roots of the weak institutional environment that characterizes many low-income countries today,” he said at a press conference. The award comes after a World Bank report showed that the 26 poorest countries in the world – with 40% of their population most impoverished – are more in debt than at any time since 2006, marking a major shift in the fight against poverty. .
The prestigious prize, officially known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfredo Nobel, is the final prize awarded this year and is worth 11 million Swedish krona ($1.1 million).
Acemoglu said at the Nobel press conference that data collected by pro-democracy groups showed that government institutions and the rule of law were weakening in many parts of the world.
“I think this is a time when democracy is going through a difficult phase,” Acemoglu said. “And it is very important, in a sense, that they claim the high position of providing good governance, clean governance and the promise of democracy to the general public.”
Acemoglu and Johnson work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Robinson at the University of Chicago.
Technology through the ages
Acemoglu and Johnson recently collaborated on a book that looks at technology over time and shows how some technological advances have been better at creating jobs and distributing wealth than others. The Science, Literature and Economics for Peace Prize, created by the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel, is not one of the original prizes and was first awarded in 1901, but a later addition was created and financed by the Central Bank from Sweden. in 1968.
Past winners include a range of influential thinkers, such as Milton Friedman and John Nash – played by actors Russell Crowe in the 2001 film “A Beautiful Mind” – and, recently, former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
Research into discrimination has featured heavily in recent awards. Last year, Harvard economic historian Claudia Goldin won the prize for her work highlighting the causes of pay and labor market disparities between men and women.
In 2019, economists Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Cramer won the award for their work in combating poverty.
The economics prize has been dominated by US academics since its inception, while US-based researchers also tend to make up a large share of the winners in the scientific fields for which the 2024 winners were announced last week.
This series of awards began with US scientists Victor Ambrose and Gary Ruvkun winning awards for the drug on Monday and ended with Japanese scientists. Nihon Hidankyo, an organization of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that campaigned for the abolition of nuclear weapons receiving the Peace Prize Friday
