This year's Nobel prize in economic sciences is being awarded to three U.S.-based economists for their work on showing the importance of societal institutions for a country's prosperity.
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson will share the award, given for helping to demonstrate how poor rule of law and other institutions that exploit people do not generate economic growth or positive change.
Acemoglu and Johnson are professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Robinson is director at the University of Chicago's Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts.
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Photo: CHRISTINE OLSSON / AFP / Getty Images