Institutions rule: COCD's path to the Nobel in economics this year

Why Colonial Origins of Comparative Development is Nobel-worthy

When I first read the “Colonial Origins of Comparative Development,” (COCD) by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson (AJR) more than 20 years ago, I was smitten. So much so that I told several colleagues at the International Monetary Fund that the paper would one day win the Nobel Prize. I say this not to trumpet my predictive abilities (mostly poor) but to illustrate that Keatsian sense of being awestruck: “Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken.”

At that time, pioneered by Robert Barro, an entire sub-discipline