Three immigrants to America have won the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics, illustrating continued contributions by immigrants to the United States. The three immigrants—one from Turkey and two from the United Kingdom—are affiliated with U.S. universities. Immigrants have been awarded 38%, or 45 of 117, of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in chemistry, medicine and physics since 2000, according to an analysis by the National Foundation for American Policy (updated through the 2024 awards). Immigrants also have been awarded 31% (24 of 78) of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in economics, including 28% since 2000.
The 2024 Award In Economics
“This year’s laureates in the economic sciences—Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson—have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity,” according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences press release issued for the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics. “Societies with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better. The laureates’ research helps us understand why.” The economics award originated in 1969 and is formally named the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
Daron Acemoglu was born in Istanbul, Turkey. He received an undergraduate degree from the University of York, followed by an MSc. and Ph.D. from the London School of Economics. He came to America in 1993 and became an economics professor at MIT. He coauthored with James Robinson Why Nations Fail and the Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. In 2023, he coauthored with Simon Johnson the book Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity.
Simon Johnson was born in the United Kingdom. He received a B.A. at the University of Oxford and an M.A. from the University of Manchester before coming to America as an international student and earning a Ph.D. at MIT. In addition to Power and Progress, Johnson published (with Jonathan Gruber) Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream, and other books. He has stayed engaged with world affairs, serving as chief economist at the International Monetary Fund (2007-08). In 2024, he published a working paper for the Brookings Institution on “Strengthening Enforcement of the Russian Oil Cap” with Catherine Wolfram.
James Robinson was born in the United Kingdom and earned a BSc. from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He received an M.A. from the University of Warwick before coming to the United States as an international student and earning a Ph.D. at Yale University. He became a professor at the University of Chicago in 2015 and since 2016 has been the Reverend Dr. Richard L. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies at the school. Before the University of Chicago, Robinson was a professor at Harvard, U.C.-Berkeley and other institutions. He coauthored another book with Daron Acemoglu titled The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty and has received numerous awards.
In a joint paper published in 2004 by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson developed the “empirical and theoretical case” that economic institutions play a fundamental role in the differences in economic development around the world: “Economic institutions encouraging economic growth emerge when political institutions allocate power to groups with interests in broad-based property rights enforcement, when they create effective constraints on power-holders, and when there are relatively few rents to be captured by power-holders.”
Many Previous Immigrant Nobel Prize Winners
This year is not the first time multiple recipients of the Nobel Prize in economics have been immigrants. Two of the three U.S. winners of the Nobel Prize in economics in 2019 were immigrants—MIT professors Abhijit Banerjee, born in India, and Esther Duflo, born in France. In 2021, David Card, an immigrant from Canada, and Guido W. Imbens, born in the Netherlands, were awarded the Nobel Prize in economics, as well as U.S.-born professor Joshua Angrist.
In 2021, three of the four U.S. winners of Nobel Prizes in medicine, chemistry and physics were immigrants to America. In 2016, all six American recipients of the Nobel Prize in economics and scientific fields were immigrants.
In 2023, four of the six U.S. recipients of Nobel Prizes in medicine, chemistry and physics came to America as immigrants. In 2023, Hungarian-born Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman shared the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine “for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.”
In its recent report, the National Academy of Sciences cited the high proportion of immigrants among Nobel Prize winners as one of several arguments for liberalizing U.S. immigration laws and regulations. Analysts say the Nobel Prize announcements have become an annual reminder of the contributions of immigrants to America.