Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson have won the 2024 Nobel Economics Prize “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity”, says the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
“Reducing the vast differences in income between countries is one of our time’s greatest challenges,” Jakob Svensson, chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences, said in a statement.
“The laureates have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for achieving this,” Svensson added.
Acemoglu and Johnson work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology while Robinson conducts his research at the University of Chicago.
“I am delighted. It’s just a real shock and amazing news,” Acemoglu told reporters via telephone after the announcement, Al Jazeera reported.
The award, formally known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was awarded on Monday in Stockholm, and is the final prize to be given out this year and is worth 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.1m).
Read also: Claudia Goldin becomes third woman ever to win Nobel Prize in Economics
The Economics Award is not one of the original prizes for science, literature and peace created by the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel and first awarded in 1901, but a later addition established and funded by Sweden’s central bank in 1968.
Past winners include a host of influential thinkers such as Milton Friedman, John Nash and, more recently, former US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
Last year, Harvard economic historian Claudia Goldin won the prize for her work highlighting the causes of wage and labour market inequality between men and women.
The economics prize has been dominated by US academics since its inception, while US-based researchers also tend to account for a large portion of winners in the scientific fields for which 2024 laureates were announced last week.
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