News

Professor James Robinson, an active African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) network member and collaborator is among the three economists awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics. 

Together with Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson, they received this award for their research into how the nature of institutions helps explain why some countries become rich and others remain poor. The trio of economists were announced the prize winners by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences during a news conference in Stockholm, on 14th October 2024. The Nobel Committee praised the trio for exploring why “societies with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better.” The Committee added that the analysis by the trio of economists provides a deeper insight into why countries fail or succeed.

The AERC Executive Director, Prof Victor Murinde congratulated the trio for this significant distinction and achievement observing that the award speaks volumes. “They have accomplished something truly amazing.   The achievement is a testament to their talent, passion, and hard work”.

Currently, Prof. Robinson is leading a team of five senior scholars from the global north and one from sub-Saharan Africa in the co-teaching of the AERC Collaborative PhD Programme (CPP) Joint Facility for Electives (JFE) 2024 course on Research Methods and Computer Applications. This course has been significantly revamped to cover approaches to research design and methods. 

Prof. Robinson gave the 2021 Benno Ndulu Memorial Lecture on “Africa’s Latent Assets” in honor of the former Governor of the Bank of Tanzania. Furthermore, alongside Prof. Maria Angelica Bautista of the University of Chicago, he conducted a two-week summer lecture and training on research methods from 13th to 24th June 2022. During the interactive master class, the attendees learnt canonical approaches to research using African-based materials with emphasis placed on initially identifying a compelling question from the real world, fieldwork, qualitative studies, or noticing anomalous variation in an interesting outcome.  

He was also a keynote presenter at the Africa Meeting of the Econometric Society (AFES), 1st to 3rd June 2023, hosted by the AERC in Nairobi, Kenya.  In April 2024, he gave a five-day long intensive researcher proposal development training to post-doctoral and early career researchers assembled from fragile and underserved African countries. 

Prof. Robinson is an economist and political scientist. He is the Reverend Dr. Richard L. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies and University Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago. He has conducted influential research in the field of political and economic development and the relationships between political power and institutions and prosperity. His work explores the underlying causes of economic and political divergence both historically and today and uses both the mathematical and quantitative methods of economics along with the case study, qualitative and fieldwork methodologies used in other social sciences. He is a co-author with Daron Acemoglu of Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Why Nations Fail, and The Narrow Corridor.