York graduate joins elite with American research award
Posted on 13 May 2005
Daron Acemoglu is the 2005 winner of the American Economic Association's prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, presented every two years to a top economist under the age of 40 judged to have made a significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge.
No fewer than 11 of the 20 previous recipients of the award have gone on to win the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Daron Acemoglu is currently Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and graduated with a BA in Economics from York 16 years ago.
The economics programme at York provided me with a great background to continue my graduate studies and then move onto academic research
Professor Daron Acemoglu
After leaving York in 1989, Professor Acemoglu, gained an MSc and then a PhD at the London School of Economics. In his final year in York, he won the Adam Smith Memorial Prize and the Head of Department's Special Prize. He became an Assistant Professor of Economics at MIT in 1993, Professor of Economics in 2000 and has been Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics since last year.
"The economics programme at York provided me with a great background to continue my graduate studies and then move onto academic research," he said.
His principal interests are Political Economy, Economic Development, Economic Growth, Technology, Income and Wage Inequality, Human Capital and Training, and Labour Economics.
Professor Acemoglu's winning research suggested that nations' political and social institutions play a larger impact in their economic development than geographical characteristics such as climate or access to ports.