Brings enthusiasm to every interaction.
Always respectful and encouraging to all.
Inspires students to aim high and excel.
I deeply appreciate how supportive you were throughout the course. You always made time to answer questions and provide guidance when I needed it most.
Daron Acemoglu is an Institute Professor in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he has been on the faculty since 1993. He earned a BA in economics from the University of York in 1989, an MSc in mathematical economics and econometrics from the London School of Economics in 1990, and a PhD in economics from the London School of Economics in 1992. Acemoglu serves as Faculty Co-Director of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work and is a research affiliate at MIT's Blueprint Labs. He is also affiliated with the MIT Sloan School of Management, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Center for Economic Policy Research. His research interests include political economy, economic development and growth, technological change, inequality, labor economics, macroeconomics, human capital theory, innovation, search theory, network economics, and economic theory. Acemoglu is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the British Academy, the Turkish Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, the European Economic Association, and the Society of Labor Economists. He is a member of the Group of Thirty.
Acemoglu has received numerous awards, including the 2024 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel, shared with Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson, for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity. Other honors include the John Bates Clark Medal from the American Economic Association in 2005, the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in economics in 2016, the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in 2012, the inaugural T. W. Schultz Prize in 2004, the inaugural Sherwin Rosen Award in 2004, the Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize in 2018, and honorary doctorates from the University of Utrecht, Bosporus University, University of Athens, Bilkent University, University of Bath, Ecole Normale Superieure Saclay Paris, and London Business School. He has authored or co-authored influential books such as Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (2012, with James A. Robinson), The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty (2019, with James A. Robinson), Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity (2023, with Simon Johnson), Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (2006, with James A. Robinson), and Introduction to Modern Economic Growth (2008). Key papers include The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation (2001, with Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson), Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution (2002), Democracy Does Cause Growth (2019, with Suresh Naidu, Pascual Restrepo, and James A. Robinson), and The Race Between Man and Machine: Implications of Technology for Growth, Factor Shares and Employment (2018, with Pascual Restrepo). His work has illuminated the role of inclusive institutions in fostering economic prosperity, innovation, and broad-based growth, profoundly influencing economics and policy discussions on technology, automation, and democracy.
MIT economists Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, and Simon Johnson unveil a pro-worker AI framework in their February 2026 NBER paper, urging policies to prioritize human-augmenting technologies over automation to boost jobs, wages, and equality.
