Nobel Prize in Economics awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson

The latest Nobel prize, the economics prize closed the 2024 season of the famous awards this Monday. And this year he rewarded the three economists Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson for their work “on how institutions form and affect prosperity”announced the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The first, American-Turkish, is a professor at MIT, just like the second, who is an American-British economist. The third, American, teaches at the University of Chicago. With their work, the winners “demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for the prosperity of a country. Societies where the rule of law is weak and institutions exploit the population do not generate growth or positive change. The winners’ research helps us understand why”developed the Academy in a press release.

They succeed the American Claudia Goldin, awarded in 2023 for her work on the evolution of women’s place in the job market and their income. Rewarded for having “advances our understanding of the situation of women in the labor market”she is one of the very rare women – three out of 93 winners in 55 years – to have been distinguished in this category, after her compatriot Elinor Ostrom (2009) and the Franco-American Esther Duflo (2019).

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Check for 920,000 euros

The only one not to have been provided for in Alfred Nobel’s will, the economics prize was created by the Swedish Central Bank “in memory” of the inventor. It was added in 1969 to the five traditional awards (medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace), earning him the nickname of «faux Nobel».

It closes a 2024 season which highlighted artificial intelligence for the physics and chemistry prizes and the Japanese group Nihon Hidankyo, committed against nuclear weapons, for peace. In literature, the South Korean Han Kan – the only woman of the 2024 vintage – was rewarded while the medicine prize distinguished the Americans Ambros and Ruvkun for their work in gene regulation. The winners receive a check for 11 million crowns (920,000 euros), to be shared in the event of multiple winners.