The Nobel Prize in Economics for 2024 has been shared by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.”
In a post of X (formerly Twitter) the Nobel committee had said, “The laureates’ model for explaining the circumstances under which political institutions are formed and changed has three components. The first is a conflict over how resources are allocated and who holds decision-making power in a society (the elite or the masses).”
The 3 components
“The second is that the masses sometimes have the opportunity to exercise power by mobilising and threatening the ruling elite; power in a society is thus more than the power to make decisions. The third is the commitment problem, which means that the only alternative is for the elite to hand over decision-making power to the populace,” added the social media post.
Incidentally, the award for economics was initiated in 1969 and is officially known as the ‘Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences’ in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
The award in 2023
Significantly, in 2023, Claudia Goldin, a professor from Harvard University was given the award. She was only the third woman to receive the prize for economics. There are a total of 93 economics laureates so far.
Goldin was awarded the prize for her work that attempted to say why women all over the world are less likely to work compared to the males. She also explained why they earn less than men do.
2 Indians so far
So far two Indians have won Nobel prize in Economics – Amartya Sen in 1998 for his contribution to the crucial domains of welfare economics, social choice theory and development economics. In 2019, Abhijit Binayak Banerjee won it jointly with his wife Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer (an economist with the University of Chicago) for their experimental approach to tackle global poverty.
Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) was a Swedish chemist who invented dynamite and made a fortune after he exploited the knowledge commercially. The first winners of the Nobel in Economics were Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen in 1969.
While Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson work for Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Robinson is associated with University of Chicago. Biz News Business News – Personal Finance News, Share Market News, BSE/NSE News, Stock Exchange News Today
