Nobel Prize in Economics for 2024 awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson

American academics Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics 2024 ‘for studies on how institutions are formed and affect prosperity,’ announced the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Monday.

The prestigious award, officially known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, is the last award to be given this year and is worth 11 million Swedish kronor (946 thousand euros).

– Reducing the vast income disparities 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 Prize Committee for Economic Sciences.

– Societies with poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or positive change – added the award organizers on their website.

Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while James Robinson is at the University of Chicago.

Acemoglu and Johnson recently collaborated on a technology for researching books through the centuries, which showed how some technological achievements are better at creating jobs and spreading wealth than others.

The Economics Prize is not one of the original prizes for science, literature, and peace established in the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel and first awarded in 1901, but a later addition established and funded by the Swedish central bank in 1968.

Previous winners include a multitude of influential thinkers such as Milton Friedman, John Nash – portrayed by actor Russell Crowe in the 2001 film ‘A Beautiful Mind’ – and, more recently, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke.

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.

American academics have dominated the Economics Prize since its inception, while researchers living in the U.S. also tend to account for a large portion of the winners in scientific fields for which the 2024 laureates were announced last week.

This series of awards began with American scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun, who won the medicine prize on Monday, and concluded with the Japanese Nihon Hidankyo, an organization of survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki advocating for the abolition of nuclear weapons, which received the peace prize on Friday.