Professor Ashraf El-Araby, President of the National Planning Institute (NPI), extended his congratulations to Professor James Robinson, faculty member at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy (Department of Political Science), for being awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. The prestigious honor recognizes his influential work on how institutions shape economic development.
Notably, Professor Robinson previously delivered a lecture titled “The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty” as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series hosted by NPI. Launched in 2022, this initiative serves as a platform for discussing critical global challenges and fosters dialogue with international experts across disciplines and leading think tanks.
The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences is awarded for outstanding contributions to the field of economics and is widely regarded as the highest accolade in the discipline. Officially titled “The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel,” it was established in 1968 by Sweden’s central bank to mark its 300th anniversary. Unlike the original five Nobel Prizes (in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, and Peace)—endowed by Alfred Nobel in 1895—this prize is funded by the Bank of Sweden and remains the most prestigious honor in economics.