Howard W. French
When the Nobel economics prize is awarded most years, I imagine the news-following public to simply nod in silent acknowledgment over their morning coffee as they listen to the radio or read the headlines. Economists speak in their own language, they figure, and the substance of their work is just too narrow or arcane to justify questioning the judgment of the Swedish Academy.
This year’s prize-winning work is different. The research of the three scholars who share the award—Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson—readily lends itself to boiling down. Indeed, the title of Acemoglu and Robinson’s 2012 book, which partly earned them the award, is Why Nations Fail. (Johnson did not cowrite the book, but the three are frequent collaborators.)
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