Why Nobelists Fail

Sanjay G. Reddy

Development and Change, 2025, vol. 56, issue 2, 372-388

Abstract: Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson, the winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics, have been heralded as developers of major new insights in the field of institutional economics, helping to explain the basis of economic prosperity in the long run, and offering an understanding of the role of colonialism and imperialism in the making of the modern world. This essay argues that their approach is excessively narrow, based as it is on an idea of property rights as playing a talismanic role in economic growth. Other factors, including the privileged relationship between settlers and their countries of origin, can both explain the divergence between settler colonies and others and cohere with the historical facts. Moreover, there is good reason to believe that property rights, if rigidly conceived, act as a fetter on growth. A pragmatic approach to property rights, and not property‐rights absolutism, conduces to long‐run growth and development.

Date: 2025
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