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Daron Acemoğlu

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Daron Acemoglu is the Killian Professor of Economics at MIT. In 2005 he received the John Bates Clark Medal awarded to economists under forty judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge.

Kamer Daron Acemoğlu was born in Istanbul, Turkey, to Armenian parents on September 3, 1967. He is the only child of Kevork Acemoglu (1938−1988), a commercial lawyer and lecturer at Istanbul University, and Irma (d. 1991), principal of Aramyan Uncuyan, an Armenian school in Kadıköy district. He attended the Aramyan Uncuyan Armenian elementary school and graduated from Galatasaray High School in 1986. 

He became interested in politics and economics as a teenager. He earned his BA in economics at the University of York in 1989, his MSc in econometrics and mathematical economics, and his Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1990 and 1992, respectively. 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 Ph.D." Arnold Kling called him a wunderkind due to his age of receiving a Ph.D.; he became a Doctor at 25.

Acemoglu is a naturalized US citizen. He is fluent in English and Turkish and speaks at least some Armenian. He is married to Asuman "Asu" Ozdağlar, a professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and daughter of İsmail Özdağlar, a former Turkish government minister. Together they have authored several articles. As of 2015, they live in Newton, Massachusetts, with their two sons, Arda and Aras.

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Why Nations Fail

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