Will Daron Acemoglu, MIT economist, win the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in any year up to and including 2028?
He wouldn't win for Why Nations Fail, that was popular press and economists dont care about it. He'd win for his myriad papers and the Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. He's the third most cited economist (https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.nbcites.html); he has as good a shot as almost anyone without a Nobel. HSE has had him as the most likely to win for two years in a row: https://economics.hse.ru/en/news/782388228.html
imo it's more a question of "when" than "whether" he will win the Nobel.
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Sooner give the Nobel Prize to bloggers, as the “smart fraction theory” at least explains why Malaysia can function while the Phillipines can barely maintain running water—
“Ability is equally distributed, opportunity [institutions??] is not”
To be fair, it seems every literate person already shredded their book: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nations_Fail
Guns Germs and Steel (with a strand of evolution, to these very different geographies and their livability and germ load, then causing who was able to develop gunpowder, steel, or even two-story dwellings…) at least had some of the factors right.
Acemoglu gets zero things right—and the exact opposite of every prediction they make has occurred, because they aimed to lay down liberalist centrist fallacies espoused by people with zero contact with reality.
No points, and maybe strong candidate for one of the worst books ever published in any field.
@Gigacasting its not that bad. Of course it cant explain everything, but it does a good job of simplifying and supporting the importance of institutions. Guns Germs and Steel has no rigorous discussion of causality, is written by someone with no credentials, and has the most bland and obvious arguments
Terrible terrible terrible book
If you can’t figure out why Singapore is richer than Africa—and pawn off the “ends” of high trust and cooperation ignoring the “means” of innate human capital—then your theory has no value.
