Three Economists get Nobel prize for their groundbreaking research

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2024 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA, and James A. Robinson from the University of Chicago, IL, USA, for their groundbreaking research on the role of institutions in determining a country’s 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.

This year’s laureates in the economic sciences have helped us understand differences in prosperity between nations.

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity. Societies with a poor rule… pic.twitter.com/2KEQCasik2

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 14, 2024

This award is officially 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.