Daron Acemoglu
Kamer Daron Acemoğlu is a Turkish-American economist of Armenian descent who has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1993, where he is currently the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics, and was named an Institute Professor at MIT in 2019. His primary research fields include political economy, development economics, and labor economics. He received the John Bates Clark Medal in 2005, and the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2024.
Acemoglu ranked third, behind Paul Krugman and Greg Mankiw, in the list of "Favorite Living Economists Under Age 60" in a 2011 survey among American economists. In 2015, he was named the most cited economist of the past 10 years per Research Papers in Economics data. According to the Open Syllabus Project, Acemoglu is the third most frequently cited author on college syllabi for economics courses after Mankiw and Krugman.
In 2024, Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their comparative studies in prosperity between states and empires. He is regarded as a centrist with a focus on institutions, poverty and econometrics.
Early and personal life
Kamer Daron Acemoğlu was born in Istanbul to Armenian parents on September 3, 1967. His father, Kevork Acemoglu, was a commercial lawyer and lecturer at Istanbul University. His mother, Irma Acemoglu, was a poet and the principal of, an Armenian elementary school in Kadıköy, which he attended, before graduating from Galatasaray High School in 1986. He became interested in politics and economics as a teenager.He was educated at the University of York, where he received a BA in economics in 1989, and at the London School of Economics, where he received an MSc in econometrics and mathematical economics in 1990, and a PhD in economics in 1992. His doctoral thesis was titled Essays in Microfoundations of Macroeconomics: Contracts and Economic Performance. His doctoral advisor was Kevin W. S. Roberts. James Malcomson, one of his doctoral examiners at the LSE, said that even the weakest three of the seven chapters of his thesis were "more than sufficient for the award of a PhD." Arnold Kling called him a wunderkind due to the fact that he received his PhD by the time he was 25.
Acemoglu is a naturalized US citizen. He is fluent in English and Turkish, and speaks some Armenian. He is married to Asuman "Asu" Ozdağlar, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, who is the daughter of İsmail Özdağlar, a former Turkish government minister. Together, they have authored several articles., they live in Newton, Massachusetts, with their two sons, Arda and Aras.
Academic career
Acemoglu was a lecturer in economics at the London School of Economics from 1992 to 1993. He was appointed an assistant professor at MIT in 1993, where he became the Pentti Kouri Associate Professor of Economics in 1997, and was tenured in 1998. He became a full professor at MIT in 2000, and served as the Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics there from 2004 to 2010. In 2010, Acemoglu was appointed the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at MIT. In July 2019, he was named an Institute Professor, the highest faculty honor at MIT., he has mentored over 60 PhD students. Among his doctoral students are Ufuk Akçiġit, Robert Shimer, Mark Aguiar, Pol Antràs, and Gabriel Carroll. In 2014, he made $841,380, making him one of the top earners at MIT.
Acemoglu is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2005. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and a member of several other learned societies. He edited Econometrica, an academic journal published by the Econometric Society, from 2011 to 2015.
Acemoglu has authored hundreds of academic papers. He noted that most of his research has been "motivated by trying to understand the sources of poverty." His research includes a wide range of topics, including political economy, human capital theory, growth theory, economic development, innovation, labor economics, income and wage inequality, and network economics, among others. He noted in 2011 that most his research of the past 15 years concerned with what can be broadly called political economy. He has made contribution to the labor economics field.
Acemoglu has extensively collaborated with James A. Robinson, a British political scientist and his peer at the London School of Economics. Acemoglu has described it as a "very productive relationship." They have worked together on many articles and books, most of which are on the subject of growth and economic development. The two have also extensively collaborated with economist Simon Johnson.
Research and publications
Acemoglu is considered a follower of new institutional economics. His influences include Joel Mokyr, Kenneth Sokoloff, Douglass North, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Barrington Moore.Books
''Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy''
Published by Cambridge University Press in 2006, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy by Acemoglu and Robinson analyzes the creation and consolidation of democratic societies. They argue that "democracy consolidates when elites do not have a strong incentive to overthrow it. These processes depend on the strength of civil society, the structure of political institutions, the nature of political and economic crises, the level of economic inequality, the structure of the economy, and the form and extent of globalization." The book's title is derived from Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, a 1966 book by Barrington Moore Jr.Romain Wacziarg praised the book and argued that its substantive contribution is the theoretical fusion of the Marxist dialectical materialism and the ideas of Barry Weingast and Douglass North, who argued that "institutional reform can be a way for the elite to credibly commit to future policies by delegating their enactment to interests that will not wish to reverse them." William Easterly called it "one of the most important contributions to the literature on the economics of democracy in a long time." Edward Glaeser described it as "enormously significant" work and a "great contribution to the field."
''Why Nations Fail''
In their 2012 book, Why Nations Fail, Acemoglu and Robinson argue that economic growth at the forefront of technology requires political stability, which the Mayan civilization did not have, and creative destruction. The latter cannot occur without institutional restraints on the granting of monopoly and oligopoly rights. They say that the Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain, because the English Bill of Rights 1689 created such restraints.Acemoglu and Robinson insist that "development differences across countries are exclusively due to differences in political and economic institutions, and reject other theories that attribute some of the differences to culture, weather, geography or lack of knowledge about the best policies and practices." For example, "Soviet Russia generated rapid growth as it caught up rapidly with some of the advanced technologies in the world was running out of steam by the 1970s" because of a lack of creative destruction.
The book was written for the general audience. It was widely discussed by political analysts and commentators. Warren Bass wrote of it in The Washington Post: "bracing, garrulous, wildly ambitious and ultimately hopeful. It may, in fact, be a bit of a masterpiece."
Clive Crook wrote in Bloomberg News that the book deserves most of the "lavish praise" it received. In his review in Foreign Affairs Jeffrey Sachs criticized Acemoglu and Robinson for systematically ignoring factors such as domestic politics, geopolitics, technological discoveries, and natural resources. He also argued that the book's appeal was based on readers' desire to hear that "Western democracy pays off not only politically but also economically." Bill Gates called the book a "major disappointment" and characterized the authors' analysis as "vague and simplistic." Ryan Avent, an editor at The Economist, responded that "Acemoglu and Robinson might not be entirely right about why nations succeed or fail. But at least they're engaged with the right problem."
''The Narrow Corridor''
In The Narrow Corridor. States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty, Acemoglu and Robinson argue that a free society is attained when the power of the state and of society evolved in rough balance. The book introduces the concept of the "red queen effect," which suggests that liberty is maintained only when both the state and society continually evolve to keep each other in check.''Power and Progress''
Published in 2023, Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity is a book by Acemoglu and Simon Johnson on the historical development of technology and the social and political consequences of technology. The book addresses three questions, on the relationship between new machines and production techniques and wages, on the way in which technology could be harnessed for social goods, and on the reason for the enthusiasm around artificial intelligence.Power and Progress argues that technologies do not automatically yield social goods, their benefits going to a narrow elite. It offers a rather critical view of artificial intelligence, stressing its largely negative impact on jobs and wages and on democracy.
Acemoglu and Johnson also provide a vision of how new technologies could be harnessed for social good. They see the Progressive Era as offering a model. They also discuss a list of policy proposals for the redirection of technology that includes: market incentives, the break up of big tech, tax reform, investing in workers, privacy protection and data ownership, and a digital advertising tax.