Nobel Prize in economics goes to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson for their work on wealth inequality among nations

The Nobel Prize in Economics, concluding the 2024 awards season, was awarded on Monday to Turkish-American Daron Acemoglu and British-Americans Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson for their groundbreaking research on how institutions influence the prosperity of nations, according to AFP.

The researchers, all three based in the United States, were awarded "for their studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity," the jury said in its statement.

"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 achieving this," said Jakob Svensson, chairman of the Prize Committee in Economic Sciences, quoted in a statement.

By studying the different political and economic systems introduced by European colonizers around the world, the three scholars demonstrated a relationship between institutions and prosperity, the committee stressed.

"I am delighted. It’s just a real shock and amazing news!" said Acemoglu to reporters by phone. Acemoglu, 57, is a professor at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as is Johnson, 61. Robinson, 64, is a professor at the University of Chicago.

The 'false Nobel'

The Nobel Prize in Economics - as the Bank of Sweden's Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, first awarded in 1969, is known - is the only one of the prizes that was not provided for in the philanthropist's will.

It was added much later to the five traditional prizes - Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Literature and Peace - which has earned it the nickname "false Nobel."

In 1968, on the occasion of its tercentenary, Sweden's central bank, the oldest in the world, created an economic science prize in memory of Alfred Nobel, and made available to the Nobel Foundation an annual sum equivalent to the amount of the other prizes.

Last year, the prize was awarded to American Claudia Goldin, for her studies on women in the labor market.

All Nobel Prizes 2024

The economics prize closes this year's Nobel season, which honored advances in artificial intelligence with the Physics prizes, for American John Hopfield and British Geoffrey Hinton, and Chemistry, for Americans David Baker and John Jumper and Briton Demis Hassabis.

The best known, that of the Peace, went to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, which brings together survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, "for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons."

South Korean Han Kang emerged as the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Medicine prize went to Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their contributions to the understanding of gene regulation.

The award is accompanied by a gold medal, a diploma and a check for $1 million. They will be presented at ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of the scientist and creator of the prize, Alfred Nobel.