Nobel laureate who showed why the Kosygin reform was structurally doomed by extractive institutions
From Why Nations Fail: 'Soviet Russia generated rapid growth as it caught up rapidly with some of the advanced technologies in the world but was running out of steam by the 1970s because of a lack of creative destruction.'
Born to an Armenian family in Istanbul and later becoming an MIT economics professor, Daron Acemoglu is a leading institutional economist who won the 2024 Nobel Prize, alongside Simon Johnson and James Robinson, for explaining the institutional origins of prosperity gaps between nations. In Why Nations Fail (2012), written with Robinson, he analyzed the Soviet economy, arguing that prices under central planning were disconnected from real value and could not price innovation, while tying bonuses to the total wage fund killed any incentive for enterprises to automate, making the Kosygin reform structurally doomed from the start. His insight that sustained growth is impossible without inclusive institutions has had broad influence across development economics and political economy.
Career Timeline
- 1989BA, University of York
- 1992PhD, London School of Economics
- 1993–MIT Economics (full professor 2000)
- 2010–Killian Professor of Economics, MIT
- 2019–Institute Professor, MIT
- 2012Why Nations Fail published (with J. Robinson)
- 2024Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences