STOCKHOLM: The Nobel Memorial Prize in economics was awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A Robinson for their research into differences in prosperity between nations.
The three awardees “have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity”, the Nobel committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said, adding, “Societies with a 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.”
The award was announced in Stockholm on Monday.
Acemoglu and Johnson work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology while Robinson is a researcher at the University of Chicago.
Formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, the economics prize was established by the central bank in 1968 as a memorial to the 19th-century Swedish businessman and chemist who invented dynamite. He had established five Nobel Prizes — medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace, the winners of which were announced last week.
Even though the Nobel purists argue that this prize for economics is not technically a Nobel Prize, it has always been presented along with others on December 10, Nobel’s death anniversary.