Nobel 2024: Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson & James A Robinson awarded Nobel in Economics

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2024 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A Robinson “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.” 

“The laureates’ model for explaining the circumstances under which political institutions are formed and changed has three components. The first is a conflict over how resources are allocated and who holds decision-making power in a society (the elite or the masses),” the Nobel Prize said in a post on X. 

“The second is that the masses sometimes have the opportunity to exercise power by mobilising and threatening the ruling elite; power in a society is thus more than the power to make decisions. The third is the commitment problem, which means that the only alternative is for the elite to hand over decision-making power to the populace,” the post added. 

Societies with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better. The laureates’ research helps us understand why, it said. 

The laureates have “pioneered new approaches, both empirical and theoretical, that have significantly 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 social sciences,” he added.

The award is formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The central bank established it as a memorial to Nobel, the 19th-century Swedish businessman and chemist who invented dynamite and established the five Nobel Prizes. The first winners were Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen in 1969.