Daron Acemoglu, the renown American-Armenian economist, has won the Nobel Prize for Economics along with Simon Johnson and James Robinson, for their work “on the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity”.

Acemoglu was born in Istanbul in 1967 to an Armenian family; his mother, Irma Ajemian, was a poet and an educator, she was the principal of the Armenian Aramyan School in the 1960’s and 70’s, and his father Kevork Ajemian was a lawyer. Acemoglu attended the local Aramyan-Uncuyan school. After graduating the Galatasaray high school, he studied Economics at York University, and in 1989 and 1990 he received two scholarships from the Armenian Communities Department of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for his studies. Acemoglu completed his doctorate at the London School of Economics at the age of 25. He has been a professor at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) since 1993.

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson won the prestigious prize in Economics for their work that has illuminated the relationship between political systems and economic growth, highlighting that ‘societies with poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better’, the laureates’ research helps us understand the reasons behind this.

This is the second time that the Nobel Committee has honoured a former Gulbenkian Foundation scholarship recipient. In 2021, Ardem Patapoutian, an Armenian from Lebanon, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.