Three North American academics won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics this Monday for their research into why global inequality persists, particularly in countries marked by corruption and dictatorship.
British-Americans Simon Johnson and James Robinson and Turkish-American Taran Acemoglu were praised for their work “on how institutions form and affect prosperity,” according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
“Reducing large income disparities between countries is one of the greatest challenges of our time. The laureates have demonstrated the importance of social enterprises in achieving this goal,” said Jakob Svensson, Chairman of the Prize Committee for Economic Sciences.
“They identify the historical roots of the weak institutional environments that characterize many low-income countries today,” he told a press conference.
The award came a day after a World Bank report showed that the world's 26 poorest countries — home to 40% of the world's poorest people — are at their highest level of debt since 2006, marking a major turnaround in the fight against poverty.
The prestigious prize, formally known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize for Economic Sciences in honor of Alfred Nobel, is the last to be awarded this year and is worth 11 million Swedish krona ($1.1 million).
Data collected by pro-democracy groups shows that public institutions and the rule of law are weakening in many parts of the world, Acemoglu told a Nobel press conference.
“I think it's time for democracy to go through a difficult phase,” Acemoglu said. “And in some ways, it's critical that they regain a leading position in terms of good governance, clean governance, and delivering the promise of democracy to a broad spectrum of people.”
Acemoglu and Johnson work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while Robinson works at the University of Chicago.
Technology through the ages
Recently, Acemoglu and Johnson collaborated on a book that examines technology over time and demonstrates how some technological advances have been better than others at creating jobs and redistributing wealth.
The Economic Prize is one of the original scientific, literary and peace prizes created by the will of dynamite inventor and industrialist Alfred Nobel, first awarded in 1901, but established and funded by Sweden's central bank in 1968.
Past winners include many influential thinkers, including Milton Friedman, John Nash — played by actor Russell Crowe in the 2001 film “A Beautiful Mind” — and, most recently, former US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
Research on inequality has featured heavily in recent awards. Last year, Harvard economic historian Claudia Goldin won the award for her work highlighting the causes of wage and labor market inequality between men and women.
In 2019, economists Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer won the award for their work fighting poverty.
The economics prize has been dominated by American academics since its inception, while US-based researchers tend to make up the bulk of winners in the scientific fields where the 2024 laureates were announced last week.
The awards began with American scientists Victor Ambrose and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize on Monday and ended with Japan's Nihon Hidankyo, an organization of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors who campaigned for the abolition of nuclear weapons, receiving the peace prize on Friday.
