Nobel in economics awarded for research into why countries with poor institutions don’t thrive

The Nobel memorial prize in economics has been awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson for research into differences in prosperity between nations.

The three economists “have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity,” the Nobel committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

“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,” it added.

The announcement was made Monday in Stockholm.

Acemoglu and Johnson work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Robinson conducts his research at the University of Chicago.

Award honours Nobel

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences unveiled the winner Monday, wrapping up six days of awards announcements.

The award is formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The central bank established it as a memorial to Nobel, the 19th-century Swedish businessman and chemist who invented dynamite and established the five Nobel Prizes.

The first winners were Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen in 1969.

Last year, Harvard University Prof. Claudia Goldin was honoured for her research that helps explain why women around the world are less likely than men to work and why they earn less money when they do. She was only the third woman among the 93 economics laureates.

Though Nobel purists stress that the economics prize is technically not a Nobel Prize, it is always presented together with the others on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896. Nobel honours were announced last week in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace.