Early Monday, Acemoglu was standing on his hotel balcony in Athens, Greece, when he received a phone call informing him of his Nobel Prize. Economist Daron Acemoglu, 2024 Nobel prize winner in Economics, stands in an elevator after speaking to the media during a conference in Athens, Greece, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024.

Acemoglu and Johnson are professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while Robinson is director of the University of Chicago's Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts with a specialism in the economies of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

Martin Beraja, a fellow MIT professor who studies the role of government policy in stabilizing economic cycles, told the Globe that Acemoglu is “not just an economist; he is a social scientist.”