Source: The American Prospect
by Robert Kuttner
“The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded on Monday to Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, both of MIT, and to James Robinson of the University of Chicago. The award cited their research into how institutions shape which countries prosper. Their case in point was colonialism, which cast a long shadow once former colonies became independent. In some colonies, the European colonial power was mainly extractive. In others, they built political institutions that allowed a local economy eventually to thrive. This research is informed by history as well as data, and is far from the sterile and abstract economics of equation manipulation built on the assumption of market efficiency, which has long dominated the mainstream profession. There is another related subtext: a rebuke of neoliberalism, with its calls for deregulation, privatization, and fiscal austerity.” [editor’s note: I had hopes for this commentary, as a “progressive” take on how liberty promotes successful societies … until I saw that last sentence – SAT] (10/18/24)
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-10-18-redeeming-nobel-in-economics/