The Economist Who Forgot Economics

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Daron Acemoglu won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2024 and is the third most cited economist of all time.

Expansive agencies are proposed while the risk of their capture—well known in public-choice theory—is ignored.

While Acemoglu is known for integrating institutions into economics, he sometimes celebrates democratic consensus without attention to the elite institutions that formed it.

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Daron Acemoglu won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2024 and is the third most cited economist of all time. Expansive agencies are proposed while the risk of their capture—well known in public-choice theory—is ignored. While Acemoglu is known for integrating institutions into economics, he sometimes celebrates democratic consensus without attention to the elite institutions that formed it.

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He never explains why they can be trusted to direct technology, redistribution, and the administrative state.
Acemoglu argues that the postindustrial economy puts a premium on cognitive skills useful in fields such as elevating finance, health, and education, while reducing the importance of manufacturing.
He claims that automation "severs the link between mass production and shared prosperity" and...

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is that its most serious analytic failures are economic. Imperfect markets are compared with an idealized government. He recognizes that elites cannot be trusted to direct culture.

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