Most critics of President Donald Trump view him as the ultimate threat to American democracy. But to Nobel Prize–winning economist Daron Acemoglu, Trump is merely a fever, the result of an infection that’s been brewing for years before he rode down the golden escalator to announce his presidency.
The MIT economist has spent decades studying the origins of economic and political decay, specializing in how institutions foster inclusive growth—or succumb to extractive systems. In the 2012 book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, Acemoglu and coauthor James A. Robinson argue that nations prosper because of their political institutions. In 2024, Acemoglu won the Nobel Prize in economics, alongside Robinson and Simon Johnson, for demonstrating how political and economic institutions shape prosperity.
