Turkish-American Acemoglu Shares Nobel Prize for Economics

The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded on Monday to three university professors including Turkish-American economist Daron Acemoglu for their studies on prosperity gaps between nations.

Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson shared the prize with Acemoglu.

“This year’s laureates in the economic sciences – Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson – have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity. 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 Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which decides on Nobel prize winners, said on Monday.

The three were specifically honoured for their research on how European colonisation contributed to wealth inequalities between nations.

“The laureates have shown that one explanation for differences in countries’ prosperity is the societal institutions that were introduced during colonisation. Inclusive institutions were often introduced in countries that were poor when they were colonised, over time resulting in a generally prosperous population. This is an important reason for why former colonies that were once rich are now poor, and vice versa,” the press release added.

Acemoglu, a professor in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT in the US, become the third Turkish national to won the prestigious prize.

Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, and Aziz Sancar was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2015.

Born in Istanbul in 1967, Acemoglu is of Armenian descent. After completing his high school education at Galatasaray High School in Istanbul, he pursued a degree in economics at the University of York in England and later obtained his MSc and PhD from the London School of Economics, LSE.

Acemoglu has been teaching at MIT since 1993, specialising in political economics, economic development and economic theory.