Take a bow, Daron Acemoglu

The American Economic Association has awarded the John Bates Clark Award for the most promising economist under 40 to Daron Acemoglu from MIT:

Acemoglu is an extremely broad and productive economist. He has made valuable contributions to several distinct fields, starting with labor economics, and successively moving to macroeconomics, institutional economics, and political economy. His most recent work on the role of institutions in development and in political economy is especially innovative, and has already had a large impact on research in these areas. Although Acemoglu is primarily a theorist, his work is always motivated by real-world questions that arise when facts are difficult to reconcile with existing theory.

From what I know of his work, it is well deserved. I was lucky enough to attend his three-part Lionel Robbins Memorial Lectures on Understanding institutions at the London School of Economics last year. It was an impressive performance, as Daron took the audience with great facility through a tightly packed 141 page PowerPoint presentation (available here). As Antonio Saravia notes:

Acemoglu is a very prolific writer. It is a challenge to follow his work at the same pace at which he writes it. But his speed at writing falls short of his speed at talking. I once attended one of his presentations at a conference. I can guarantee you that he also deserves the award for the fastest speaker in the profession.

Hat tip to Tyler Cowen at Marginal revolution, Craig Depken at Division of labor, and Lynne Kiesling at Knowledge problem. For further commentary, also see the interesting piece by David Warsh at Economic principals:

In fact, it was a series of investigations in the history of the European colonization of much of the rest of the world, beginning in the 15th century, that made Acemoglu's reputation, demonstrating that institutions of various sorts were more important to development than economists previously had thought.  The "rules of the game" - the structure of property rights, the presence of markets, and their various frictions, the form that governments take - are key determinants of what happens next, Acemoglu showed, in some unusually inventive and convincing ways.

Also keep an eye out for his forthcoming book, written with James A Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (CUP).

Eleven of the 29 economists who have received the John Bates Clark have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. I wouldn't be surprised if Acemoglu does too.

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