MIT Sloan School of Management

The Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to Profs. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson for their “research on prosperity gaps between countries – specifically how European colonization led to some nations being rich while others poor,” reports Rachel Siegel for The Washington Post. Speaking about the inspiration for his research, Johnson noted that questions around which countries became rich, and the extent to which institutions played a role, “were not really central to the economics I learned in graduate school. We had to do a lot of work to convince people institutions actually mattered in a really big way.”

Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson have been honored with the Nobel Prize in economics sciences for their work tracing “the institutional roots of national prosperity by exploring the vastly different outcomes in former European colonies,” explains Scott Horsley for NPR’s Morning Edition. “Democracies are going through a rough patch," says Acemoglu. "And it is in some sense quite crucial that they reclaim the high ground of better governance, cleaner governance, and delivering sort of the promise of democracy to a broad range of people."

 

Profs. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson are two of the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in economic sciences. Johnson joined CBS Boston to discuss his Nobel Prize-winning research and the potential impact of AI. "People are both too optimistic and too pessimistic if they believe AI can do more things than it really can, but they haven't thought through the way in which it could really wipe out middle-skill, middle-education, middle-income jobs,” says Johnson. 

Profs. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson have been awarded the Nobel Prize in economic sciences for their research that “advanced the understanding of economic disparities among countries,” reports Paul Hannon and Justin Lahart for The Wall Street Journal. “I’ll be very happy if this prize contributes to having more awareness of the importance of building better institutions, building better democracy,” said Acemoglu. “I think those are urgent challenges for us.”

AP reporters Daniel Niemann, Mike Corder and Paul Wiseman highlight the work of Profs. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, who have been honored with the Nobel Prize in economic sciences for their work demonstrating “the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity.” Says Johnson of how AI could impact workers: “AI could either empower people with a lot of education, make them more highly skilled, enable them to do more tasks and get more pay. Or it could be another massive wave of automation that pushes the remnants of the middle down to the bottom.”

Prof. Simon Johnson, one of the recipients of this year’s Nobel Prize in economics, joins the PBS NewsHour to discuss the inspiration for his research, the role of institutions in economies around the world and how technology could be harnessed to create better jobs for all. Johnson notes that through his work with the MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative, he and his colleagues hope to “get more good jobs in the United States and around the world.” He adds that in the past, “we have managed things so that technology delivered benefits for a broad cross-section of society. But that's not what we have done in the past four decades. We need a course-correction, and that's what we're going to work on.”

Boston Globe reporter Alexa Gagosz spotlights the work of Profs. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, recipients of the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics for their research examining global inequality. MIT President Sally Kornbluth called Acemoglu and Johnson, who first stepped foot on MIT’s campus in 1985 as a graduate student, “prolific and influential scholars” whose work “reflects a very MIT interest in making a positive impact in the real world.” Kornbluth added: “Their historical investigations have a great deal to teach us about how and why real societies fail or thrive. And they [have] both become familiar voices in the news, public intellectuals trying to help us all make sense of a tumultuous world.”

Profs. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson PhD '89 have been awarded the 2024 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for their work explaining the gaps in prosperity between nations and advancing our understanding of inequality, reports Jeanna Smialek for The New York Times. “Reducing the huge differences in income between countries is one of our times’ greatest challenges,” said Jakob Svensson, chairman of the economics prize committee. Thanks to the economists’ “groundbreaking research,” he said, “we have a much deeper understanding of the root causes of why countries fail or succeed.” Acemoglu reacted to winning the prize, noting that: “You dream of having a good career, but this is over and on top of that.” 

Prof. David Rand speaks with Scientific American reporter Ben Guarino about why misinformation can spread so easily following a natural disaster like Hurricane Helene. “Disasters are ripe for conspiracy theories because there is a lot of uncertainty as things are unfolding and a lot of fear,” explains Rand. 

Fast Company reporter Kristin Toussaint spotlights a new study by MIT researchers that examines the energy burden in the U.S., the percent of a household’s income spent on energy costs. The researchers found a disproportionate number of people in the South experiencing energy poverty. “As the climate warms, we’re going to need to use more and more energy on air-conditioning, and that’s going to increase the burden on low-income households,” explains Prof. Christopher Knittel. 

Sloan Visiting Senior Lecturer Paul McDonagh-Smith speaks with Joe McKendrick of Forbes about the ongoing discussions about AI safety guidelines. “While ensuring safety is crucial, especially for frontier AI models, there is also a need to strike a balance where AI is a catalyst for innovation without putting our organizations and broader society at risk,” explains McDonagh-Smith. 

Prof. Anna Stansbury speaks with Soumaya Keynes of the Financial Times podcast “The Economics Show” about her recent research on the class ceiling, which finds that an individual’s family circumstances can hold them back, even if they have earned a PhD. “We should care if people have opportunities to fulfill their talents for reasons of equity and justice. But the other is a very kind of banal economic reason, which is efficiency,” says Stansbury. “If you assume that talent for something is equally distributed, then we should care if people that are talented aren’t getting to fulfill that talent because it’s worse for overall productivity and overall outcomes.”

Researchers from MIT and Oxford University has found “social media platforms’ suspensions of accounts may not be rooted in political biases, but rather certain political groups’ tendency to share misinformation,” reports Miranda Nazzaro for The Hill. “Thus, even under politically neutral anti-misinformation polices, political asymmetries in enforcement should be expected,” researchers wrote. “Political imbalance in enforcement need not imply bias on the part of social media companies implementing anti-misinformation polices.” 

A new working paper by MIT Prof. Antoinette Schoar and Brandeis Prof. Yang Sun explores how different people react to financial advice, reports Robin Wigglesworth for Financial Times. “The results indicate that most people do update their beliefs in the direction of the advice they receive, irrespective of their previous views,” writes Wigglesworth. 

Writing for Scientific American, MIT Prof. David Rand and University of Pennsylvania postdoctoral fellow Jennifer Allen highlight new challenges in the fight against misinformation. “Combating misbelief is much more complicated—and politically and ethically fraught—than reducing the spread of explicitly false content,” they write. “But this challenge must be bested if we want to solve the ‘misinformation’ problem.”