Daron Acemoglu

In 2019, Professor Acemoglu received MIT’s highest faculty honor by being named Institute Professor. Professor Acemoglu is a leading thinker on the labor market implications of artificial intelligence, robotics, automation, and new technologies. His innovative work challenges the way people think about how these technologies intersect with the world of work. Professor Acemoglu’s recent research focuses on the political, economic and social causes of differences in economic development across societies; the factors affecting the institutional and political evolution of nations; and how technology impacts growth and distribution of resources and is itself determined by economic and social incentives.

Professor Acemoglu is the author of over one hundred peer-reviewed articles and several books. Of special note: Why Nations Fail: the Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, with co-author James Robinson, was a New York Times bestseller in 2012; and, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (joint with James A. Robinson), was awarded the Woodrow Wilson and the William Riker prizes.

Among Professor Acemoglu’s honors, in 2005 he won the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded every two years to the best economist in the United States under the age of 40 by the American Economic Association. He has also won the Nemmers Prize in Economics, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, and been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Professor Acemoglu was awarded the Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize in 2018; and in 2019, he received the Global Economy Prize, from the Institute for the World Economy. Professor Acemoglu is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (United States), the Science Academy (Turkey), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, the European Economic Association, and the Society of Labor Economists.