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Daron Acemoglu

Institute Professor

Research Fields

Macroeconomics, Political Economy, Labor Economics, Development Economics, Economic Theory

Daron Acemoglu an Institute Professor at MIT and an elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, the British Academy of Sciences, the Turkish Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, the European Economic Association, and the Society of Labor Economists. He is also a member of the Group of Thirty. He is the author of six books, including New York Times bestseller Why Nations Fail: Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (joint with James A. Robinson), Introduction to Modern Economic Growth, The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty (with James A. Robinson), and Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity (with Simon Johnson). His academic work covers a wide range of areas, including political economy, economic development, economic growth, technological change, inequality, labor economics and economics of networks. He received the inaugural T. W. Shultz Prize from the University of Chicago in 2004, and the inaugural Sherwin Rosen Award for outstanding contribution to labor economics in 2004, Distinguished Science Award from the Turkish Sciences Association in 2006, the John von Neumann Award, Rajk College, Budapest in 2007, the Carnegie Fellowship in 2017, the Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize in 2018, the Global Economy Prize in 2019, and the CME Mathematical and Statistical Research Institute prize in 2021. He was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in 2005, the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in 2012, and the 2016 BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award. He holds Honorary Doctorates from the University of Utrecht, the Bosporus University, University of Athens, Bilkent University, the University of Bath, Ecole Normale Superieure, Saclay Paris, and the London Business School. 

Publications of Note

Quarterly Journal of Economics
Macroeconomics, Political Economy

Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117, pp. 1231-1294
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, James A. Robinson
November 2002
Handbook of Labor Economics 4(B)
Labor Economics, Macroeconomics

Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings

Handbook of Labor Economics, 4(B), pp. 1043-1171
Daron Acemoglu, David Autor
June 2011
Macroeconomics

The Network Origins of Aggregate Fluctuations

Econometrica, 80(5), pp. 1977-2016
Daron Acemoglu, Vasco M. Carvalho, Asuman Ozdaglar, Alireza Tahbaz-Salehi
September 2012
American Economic Review
Environmental Economics, Macroeconomics

The Environment and Directed Technical Change

American Economic Review, 102(1), pp. 131–166
Daron Acemoglu, Philippe Aghion, Leonardo Bursztyn, David Hemous
February 2012
American Economic Review
Labor Economics, Macroeconomics

The Race Between Man and Machine: Implications of Technology for Growth, Factor Shares and Employment

American Economic Review, 108(6), pp. 1488–1542
Daron Acemoglu, Pascual Restrepo
June 2018
Macroeconomics, Political Economy

Democracy Does Cause Growth

Journal of Political Economy, 127(1), pp. 47-100
Daron Acemoglu, Suresh Naidu, Pascual Restrepo, James A. Robinson
February 2019
Labor Economics

Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets

Journal of Political Economy, 128(6), pp. 2188–2244
Daron Acemoglu, Pascual Restrepo
June 2020

Awards and Honors

2005
John Bates Clark Medal
2012
Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize
2016
BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award
2017
Carnegie Fellowship
2019
Global Economy Prize