Daron AcemoÄŸlu
Daron Acemoğlu ( born September 3, 1967 in Istanbul) is an American- Turkish economist of Armenian descent. His father, Kevork, who died in 1988, was a lawyer and lecturer at the University of Istanbul. His mother Irma († 1991) was an Armenian poet.
Academic Career
Acemoglu is Elizabeth & James Killian Professor of Applied Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also works at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and Centre for Economic Policy Research. His bachelor's degree was awarded Acemoglu 1989 by the University of York and his Ph.D. in 1992 from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was the John Bates Clark medal, awarded in 2005, 2012 Nemmers Prize in Economics. Since 2011 ( and probably 2015 ) is Acemoglu editor of the journal Econometrica.
Research
As a researcher, he has worked particularly in the areas of political economy, development economics, growth theory, technology, income and wage inequality, human capital and training, and labor economics.
Being together with Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson, 2001 published essay Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution provoked a debate between Acemoglu and Jeffrey Sachs on the causes of underdevelopment. In contrast to Sachs, which returns underdevelopment primarily on geographical factors, represented Acemoglu et al. the view that poor institutional frameworks constitute the main reason for the differences in the level of economic development between various former colonies. Here, according to their study in the poorer regions (eg Australia ), the colonizers have created institutions for investment ( broader property rights for the population), while in the more prosperous regions (eg the former territories of the Incas in South America) more example Forced labor was used and the power in the hands of a small elite was (so-called extraction institutions). This had led to an inverted relationship between poorer and wealthier colonies in the 19th century.
This approach was, inter alia, Pranab Bardhan criticized as too Eurocentric, since he is unable to explain the economic underdevelopment of non-or slightly colonized states such as Ethiopia, Thailand or China.
Writings
- With James A. Robinson: Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. , 2005.
- Introduction to Modern Economic Growth. , 2008.
- With James A. Robinson: Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. 2012 nations and their wealth: the key to wealth, review of Christian Ricken in Spiegel Online, April 7, 2012. German: Why nations fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-000546-5.