Daron Acemoğlu

Daron Acemoğlu
Born	(1967-09-03) September 3, 1967 Istanbul, Turkey
Nationality	Turkey and the United States
Spouse(s)	Asu Özdağlar
Institution	Massachusetts Institute of Technology London School of Economics
Field	Economic growth, Development Economics, Political economy
School or tradition	New institutional economics
Alma mater	London School of Economics University of York
Awards	John Bates Clark Medal (2005) John von Neumann Award (2007) Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics (2012)
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

Kamer Daron Acemoğlu (Turkish pronunciation: [ˈadʒemoːɫu]; born September 3, 1967) is a Turkish-born American economist of Armenian origin.

Life and career

Acemoğlu was born in Istanbul, Turkey to an Armenian family. His father, Kevork, who died in 1988, was a lawyer and lecturer at the University of Istanbul. His mother Irma (died in 1991) was a principal and teacher at an Armenian middle school in Istanbul.

Acemoğlu graduated in 1986 from the Galatasaray High School in Istanbul, going on to gain his B.A. degree from the University of York, UK and his M.Sc. degree in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics and then his Ph.D. degree in 1992 from the London School of Economics.

He was a lecturer in economics at the LSE from 1992–1993, before becoming a member of the M.I.T. faculty in 1993. He was promoted to full professor in 2000, and was named the Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics in 2004. He is a member of the Economic Growth program of the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research. He is also affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research, Center for Economic Performance, International Growth Centre, and Centre for Economic Policy Research. Acemoğlu is the co-editor of Econometrica, Review of Economics and Statistics, and associate editor of the Journal of Economic Growth, and an editorial committee board member of the Annual Review of Economics. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006.

Currently the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston he is among the 10 most cited economists in the world according to IDEAS/RePEc. Winner of the 2005 John Bates Clark Medal. His most cited article is "Colonial origins of comparative development" (2001). His principal interests are political economy, development economics, economic growth, technology, income and wage inequality, human capital and training, and labour economics. His most recent works concentrate on the role of institutions in economic development and political economy.

Acemoğlu has received a Turkish presidential award on Culture and Arts, in 2013, and another on Sciences from the Turkish Academy of Sciences in 2006.

Views

Acemoğlu was one of the academics who signed a letter in support of legalizing marijuana in Colorado state's successful 2013 ballot referendum Amendment 64.

He wrote an op-ed for The Globe and Mail on the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, favoring inclusive society rather than one based on extractive institutions, "where an elite controls the economic and political system and uses its power to extract wealth from the society at everyone else’s expense", a term defined in his recent book.

In a Hürriyet interview on March 30, 2014, with reference to a recent offer of an ambassadorial posting from Turkish Government, he stated: "I do not intend to be part of bureaucracy or enter politics".

Personal life

He is married to Asu Özdağlar, a Turkish professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and daughter of a Turkish politician, İsmail Özdağlar, a former government minister.

Acemoğlu has become a celebrity based on his Acemoğlu Facts tumblr feed. The meme is a spin-off of Chuck Norris Facts with an economics flavour, documenting Acemoğlu's fictitious and often preposterous feats in the study of economics.

Awards

James Malcomson, one of his doctoral examiners, said

[Acemoğlu's] thesis consisted of seven substantive chapters, each of which formed a paper in its own right. Each of these chapters was itself of very high quality. Indeed, I would consider even the weakest three of them to have been more than sufficient for the award of a PhD.

— James Malcomson, one of his thesis examiners.

• The University of York, Faculty of Economics, Head of Department Prize, 1988
• Award for best paper published in the Economic Journal in 1996
• T. W. Schultz prize at the University of Chicago in 2004
• Sherwin Rosen award for outstanding contribution to labor economics in 2004
• John Bates Clark Medal in 2005
• Elected Fellow to American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006.
• Academy Awards in the Social Sciences – 2006, Turkish Academy of Science (Acemoğlu received the Science Award for his theoretical and empirical contributions on "the role of institutions in the process of economic development, based on the example of long-term effects left by institutions founded by European colonial administrations".)
• Turkish-American Scientists and Scholars Association's Turkish Science Award (2006).
• John von Neumann Award in 2007, given by the Rajk László College for Advanced Studies
• Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics in 2012, "for fundamental contributions to the understanding of political institutions, technical change and economic growth.”
• Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2012, shortlist, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
• Culture and Arts Award of the Turkish Presidency 2013.

Selected publications

• Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (joint with James A. Robinson), Crown Publishers, 2012.
• Introduction to Modern Economic Growth Princeton University Press, 2008.
• Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (joint with James A. Robinson) Cambridge University Press, 2005
• Recent Developments in Growth Theory, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2004. ISBN 978-1-84376-259-1

External links

• Home page
• Who is Acemoglu
• Presentation at World Bank
• "Prosperity is all about political institutions and politics" Interview with Daron Acemoglu by Luis Martin (April 30, 2012)