Trio of economists win Nobel Prize for work on wealth of nations

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded on Monday to Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, both of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and to James Robinson of the University of Chicago. Acemoglu and Robinson were co-authors of “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty,” which was first published in 2012. The work of the three economists is based on the history of colonialism, and the different ways in which national experiences have affected institutions. Their broadest conclusion is that democracies are better at delivering prosperity over the long term, although they acknowledge that authoritarian governments can be effective at exploiting existing resources, such as raw materials or workers. However, authoritarian forms of government typically fail to innovate, which is a strength of democracies.