Nobel Prize in Economics 2024 awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson have been awarded for their “studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.” Photo: X/@NobelPrize

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson have been awarded the 2024 Economics Nobel Prize for their “studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.”

The Nobel Prize 2024: An interactive guide

The Nobel Prize in Economics 2023 was awarded to American economist Claudia Goldin “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes” and was ironically one of very few women ever handed the prize.

Of the 93 laureates honoured since 1969, only three have been women — Goldin in 2023, her compatriot Elinor Ostrom in 2009 and French-American Esther Duflo in 2019.

‘False Nobel’

The economics prize is the only Nobel not among the original five created in the will of Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896.

It was instead created through a donation from the Swedish central bank in 1968, leading detractors to dub it “a false Nobel”.

However, like for the other Nobel science prizes, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences decides the winner and follows the same selection process.

The economics prize wraps up this year’s Nobel season, which honoured achievements in artificial intelligence for the physics and chemistry prizes, while the Peace Prize went to Japanese group Nihon Hidankyo, committed to fighting nuclear weapons.

The 2024 Nobel Prize in physics went to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”

The 2024 Nobel Prize for chemistry was shared by David Baker “for computational protein design” along with Demis Hassabis and John Jumper “for protein structure prediction.”

South Korea’s Han Kan won the literature prize — the only woman laureate so far this year — while the medicine prize lauded discoveries in understanding gene regulation.

The Nobel Prizes consist of a diploma, a gold medal and a one-million-dollar lump sum.

They will be presented at ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist and prize creator Alfred Nobel.

(With AFP inputs)