The 2024 Nobel in economics and institutions

Jeanna Smialek, “Three Receive Nobel in Economics for Research on Global Inequality”, The New York Times, 14^th October 2024.

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded on Monday to Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, both of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and to James Robinson of the University of Chicago.

They received the prize for their research into how institutions shape which countries become wealthy and prosperous — and how those structures came to exist in the first place.

The laureates delved¹ into the world’s colonial past to trace how gaps emerged between nations, arguing that countries that started out with more inclusive institutions during the colonial period tended to become more prosperous. […]

According to the researchers, prosperity today is partly a legacy of how a nation’s institutions evolved over time — which they studied by looking at what happened to countries during European colonization.

Countries with “inclusive” institutions that protected personal property rights