Daron Acemoglu

His father, Kevork Acemoglu (1938−1988), was a commercial lawyer and lecturer at Istanbul University.

Kamer Daron Acemoğlu (born September 3, 1967) is a Turkish-born American economist who has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1993, where he is currently the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics.

Kamer Daron Acemoğlu was born in Istanbul to Armenian parents on September 3, 1967.

Born to Armenian parents in Istanbul, Acemoglu received a BA from the University of York in 1989, and a PhD from the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1992.

He lectured at LSE for a year before joining the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He was educated at the University of York, where he received a BA in economics in 1989, and at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he received an MSc in econometrics and mathematical economics in 1990, and a PhD in economics in 1992.

His doctoral thesis was titled Essays in Microfoundations of Macroeconomics: Contracts and Economic Performance.

His doctoral advisor was Kevin W. S. Roberts.

James Malcomson, one of his doctoral examiners at the LSE, said that even the weakest three of the seven chapters of his thesis were "more than sufficient for the award of a PhD."

Arnold Kling called him a wunderkind due to the age at which he received his PhD (25).

Acemoglu is a naturalized citizen of the US.

He is fluent in English and Turkish, and speaks some Armenian.

He is married to Asuman "Asu" Ozdağlar, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, who is the daughter of İsmail Özdağlar, a former Turkish government minister.

Together, they have authored several articles.

His mother, Irma Acemoglu (d. 1991), was the principal of Aramyan Uncuyan, an Armenian elementary school in Kadıköy, which Daron attended, before graduating from Galatasaray High School in 1986.

He became interested in politics and economics as a teenager.

Acemoglu was a lecturer in economics at the LSE from 1992 to 1993.

He was appointed an assistant professor at MIT in 1993, where he became the Pentti Kouri Associate Professor of Economics in 1997, and was tenured in 1998.

He became a full professor at MIT in 2000, and served as the Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics there from 2004 to 2010.

He received the John Bates Clark Medal in 2005, and was named an Institute Professor at MIT in 2019.

He was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in 2005.

Acemoglu is best known for his work on political economy.

He has authored hundreds of papers, many of them with his long-time collaborators Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson.

Acemoglu is a research associate at the NBER, and was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2005.

With Robinson, he co-authored the books Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (2006) and Why Nations Fail (2012).

The latter, an influential book on the role that institutions play in shaping nations' economic outcomes, receive wide scholarly and media attention.

Described as a centrist, he believes in a regulated market economy.

He regularly comments on political issues, economic inequality, and a variety of specific policies.

He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014.

He is also a Senior Fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and a member of several other learned societies.

In 2010, Acemoglu was appointed the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at MIT.

Acemoglu ranked third, behind Paul Krugman and Greg Mankiw, in the list of "Favorite Living Economists Under Age 60" in a 2011 survey among American economists.

He edited Econometrica, an academic journal published by the Econometric Society, from 2011 to 2015.

In 2014, he made $841,380, making him one of the top earners at MIT.

In 2015, he was named the most cited economist of the past 10 years per Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) data.

According to the Open Syllabus Project, Acemoglu is the third most frequently cited author on college syllabi for economics courses after Mankiw and Krugman.

As of 2015, they live in Newton, Massachusetts with their two sons, Arda and Aras.

In July 2019, he was named an Institute Professor, the highest faculty honour at MIT.

As of 2019, he has mentored over 60 PhD students.

Among his doctoral students are Robert Shimer, Mark Aguiar, Pol Antràs, and Gabriel Carroll.