STOCKHOLM – The Nobel Prize in economics was awarded Monday to three Americans for their research into why some countries succeed and others fail. Two of the three economists are professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
Nobel Prize in Economics
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson “have demonstrated the importance of social institutions for a country’s prosperity,” the Nobel Committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said at the announcement in Stockholm.
“Societies with 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 added.
Acemoglu and Johnson work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Robinson does his research at the University of Chicago.
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“Reducing the enormous income gaps between countries is one of the greatest challenges of our time. The laureates have demonstrated the importance of social institutions in achieving this,” said Jakob Svensson, chairman of the Committee for the Prize for Economic Sciences.
He said their research has provided “a much deeper understanding of the root causes of why countries fail or succeed.”
“Never expect something like this”
Reached by the academy in Athens, Greece, where he will speak at a conference, Acemoglu said he was surprised and shocked by the award.
“You never expect something like that,” he said.
The economics prize is formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel. The central bank established it in 1968 as a memorial to Nobel, the 19th-century Swedish businessman and chemist who invented dynamite and established the five Nobel Prizes.
Although Nobel Prize purists insist that the economics prize is not technically a Nobel Prize, it is always awarded along with the other prizes on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.
The Nobel Prizes were announced last week medicinephysics, chemistry, literature and peace.
Last yearProfessor Claudia Goldin of Harvard University received the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Associated Press reporters Daniel Niemann and Mike Corder contributed to this report.
