Trio win 2024 award for economics – DW – 10/14/2024 | EUROtoday

The 2024 Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded on Monday to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson for his or her research into why some international locations succeed and others fail.

The winners have been introduced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences at a information convention in Stockholm, marking the top of the 2024 Nobel season after prizes for drugs, physics, chemistry, literature and peace have been awarded final week.

The economics award is value 11 million Swedish kronor (roughly $1 million; €0.92 million) — the identical as the opposite Nobel classes.

Who are this 12 months’s winners?

Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson are extremely influential economists and political scientists, significantly recognized for his or her collaborations on the connection between political establishments, financial improvement, and long-term prosperity.

Acemoglu and Johnson are professors on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), whereas Robinson works for the University of Chicago.

“Reducing the vast differences in income between countries is one of our time’s greatest challenges. The laureates have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity,” Jakob Svensson, Chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences stated.

“Societies with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better,” the award organizers added on their web site.

Acemoglu and Johnson not too long ago revealed the ebook ‘Why Nations Fail,’ which appears to be like at wealth inequality between nations. The pair surveyed expertise via the ages and demonstrated how some technological advances have been higher at creating jobs and spreading wealth than others.

Addressing the information convention by cellphone from Athens, Greece, Acemoglu stated he was “surprised and shocked” on the win.

Economics a latecomer to the Nobel sequence

The Nobel Prize in Economics was not among the many 5 Nobel Prizes established by the late Swedish chemist, inventor, businessman and engineer Alfred Noble in his will in 1895.

It was created in 1968 by an endowment from Sweden’s central financial institution and was first awarded the next 12 months.

The winner is set by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which follows the identical choice course of as for the opposite Nobel prizes.

Between 1969 and 2023, the economics prize has been received 55 instances by 93 laureates.

Before Monday’s announcement, the United States had achieved essentially the most Nobel economics laureates, with 68 lecturers choosing up the prize over the previous 55 years, adopted by the United Kingdom with 11 and Canada and France tied with 4.

Friedman, Hayek, Bernanke amongst earlier laureates

Last 12 months’s prize went to US economist and Harvard University professor Claudia Goldin for her analysis into the position of ladies within the labor market. Goldin is certainly one of solely three ladies to be awarded the prize and was the primary lady to win solo.

Among the most well-known economics laureates have been Friedrich Hayek in 1974, who argued in protection of free-market capitalism, Milton Friedman, who received in 1976 for his work on monetarism, and Amartya Sen in 1998, recognized for his work in welfare economics.

Former US Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke was certainly one of three laureates introduced in 2022, for his evaluation of the 1929-1939 Great Depression.

Economics continues to court docket controversy

The prize stays controversial as certainly one of Nobel’s descendants, Swedish human rights lawyer Peter Nobel, insists that the late inventor’s household had no intention of recognizing economics.

Nobel was recognized for his curiosity in humanitarian and scientific endeavors, not economics, his great-grandnephew has stated.

The prize has additionally been accused of getting an ideological bias towards sure financial colleges of thought.

Critics have denounced some earlier winners for placing ahead theories that led to damaging societal impacts, together with inequality and monetary instability.

The formal title of the award is the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

The trio can be offered at ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s demise in 1896.

mm/rmt (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)