Simon Johnson

Johnson shared the 2024 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson for their research on how institutions shape long-run economic development. Their work explains why some nations prosper while others remain poor, tracing differences to institutional choices made during critical historical junctures.

Johnson's collaborative work with Acemoglu and Robinson, particularly in their book "Why Nations Fail," argues that colonial-era institutions created path dependencies that persist centuries later. Regions where colonizers established inclusive institutions with secure property rights tended to develop economically, while areas with extractive institutions designed to transfer wealth to elites remained poor.

Johnson is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he was previously associate dean. He served as chief economist at the International Monetary Fund from 2007 to 2008, during the early stages of the global financial crisis.

Johnson has been a vocal critic of "too big to fail" banks, arguing in his book "13 Bankers" that the political influence of large financial institutions contributed to the 2008 crisis. He advocates for breaking up the largest banks and imposing stricter regulations to reduce systemic risk.