MIT economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson share Nobel Prize in Economics

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] good morning good afternoon good evening depending on where you're joining us from welcome to mit's press briefing with MIT professors and now laurates donon asoglu and Simon Johnson whether you're on the line as a journalist or just following along with the live webcast we're grateful for your interest in economic Sciences for joining us and recognizing their important contributions to knowledge for the benefit of of humankind and for your time today we're just about ready to get started but a few brief logistical items up top am it president Sally cornbluth is on the line with us she will get us started with a congrat with congratulatory remarks on behalf of our entire MIT family our economists will then each offer some brief Reflections and then we'll open for Q&A at that point journalists if you have a question please raise your hand using the button at the bottom of your Zoom screen when I open your line please restate your name and Outlet before asking your question for those of you following along especially if there are any former students or former student journalists out there if we can get a couple questions in from you we will just email those to questions mit.edu as a bit of trivia for the students watching today Professor Johnson not himself first set foot on mit's campus 39 years ago in 1985 as a graduate student and earned his PhD in economics in 1989 so we're so glad you're all with us with that I'd like to turn it over to Sally cornbluth mit's president Sally thank you Kimberly and good morning everybody I'm delighted to say out loud what you already know this morning the 2024 sparus Reese Bon prize in economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel was awarded to Daron asoglu Institute professor and Simon Johnson the Ronald a CTS 1954 professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management they share the award with James Robinson of the University of Chicago for studies of how institutions are formed and affect Prosperity through extensive historical studies over time and across societies their work has demonstrated the profound extent to which a nation's economic growth and prosperity depend on healthy societal institutions including the rule of law Deron and Simon are prolific and influential influential Scholars I cannot begin to enumerate their accomplishments here including their work as mentors and teachers and I know that we're all eager to hear from the laurates themselves so I'll offer just a brief observation Simon and derone reflect a kind of MIT ideal in the Excellence and rigor of their work certainly but also in at least two other ways first and as this morning's three-way prize illustrates their work is extraordinarily collaborative they are also co-authors of the 2023 book power and progress our 1,000-year struggles over technology and prosperity their United wisdom and insight have rightly made their views exceptionally influential and second their work reflects a very MIT interest in making a positive impact in the real world their historical investigations have a great deal to teach us about how and why real societies fail or Thrive and they have both become familiar voices in The News public intellectuals trying to help us all make sense of a tumultuous world I hope this award board and last week's science nobels can serve to remind the nation and the world of why Advanced research deserves our sustained and enthusiastic Collective support now derone Simon to you both and your colorate congratulations the floor is yours thank you Sally uh it's uh wonderful it's uh amazing event amazing day and I am so happy to be sharing the stage with you Sally and with Simon uh you know it's uh a long journey because the topics that were cited in the award statement were the ones that actually drew me to economics little did I know that that's not what economics was focused on at the time and it was only towards the end of my PhD and I started thinking again well you know we should really be thinking more about these things is there a way of doing so and uh I was fortunate uh enough to you know first partner with Jim Robinson and then with Sim and Johnson to sort of have this journey with them and it's been a delightful one and I think MIT has been a wonderful place uh it's been really supportive the rigor the uh commitment to Quality academic integrity and detail at MIT I think is the best environment one could ask so uh it's it's been wonderful to have this journey at MIT Simon so uh my journey has also been a very MIT Journey starting in 1985 and i' just like to Echo what Dron said about the the rigor of the place and to to emphasize to everybody that none of these Journeys these academic intellectual Journeys are are easy there's ups and and and there's downs but my colleagues have have always one of them says this quite directly but they've all I think communicated this one way or another that you should swing for the fences an American baseball metaphor obviously meaning that you should really try to go big and and I came to these the issues that that are for which we won the Nobel Prize after 10 hard years of working in Eastern Europe and really being quite frustrated with some of the answers that standard economics was was giving and and when I met Don and when I when I learned what Don and Jim were already pursuing and and and we focused on those questions together it was really quite liberating it felt big it felt very big felt like a big risk Sally it felt like a risk with my career I didn't have tenure at that point but it felt like a risk that I wanted to take and a risk that MIT would would would reward if it paid out and and and and and it did obviously pay off in in a really big way so thank thank you donon thank you Jim thank you MIT in the form of Sally for for making all of this possible thank you all so very much much appreciated so at this time journalists will open up the floor for your questions again please raise your hand using the button at the bottom of the zoom screen when I open your line please restate your name and Outlet before asking your question and again for those student journalists and former students out there please reach out to questions at mit.edu and we're definitely going to do what we can to get to as many of those questions as we can do all right Darien Woods hi there uh this is Darian woods from the indicator from Planet Money my question is around what the term inclusive institutions really means could this mean widespread education infrastructure and mostly free Market but yet an authoritarian non-democratic government like which was the case in Taiwan Singapore China and other fast growing East Asian economies in the 20th century uh do you want me to take that Simon or donon will answer all the hard questions I I'll I'll just do the easy on I'll follow go ahead first well you know uh institutions are not a Panacea they provide a framework so some of the details of good policy are of course things you build on institutions but broadly speaking we distinguish inclusive Economic Institutions and inclusive political institutions inclusive Economic Institutions have secure property rights and things that uphold something like equality of opportunity a Level Playing Field so education public infrastructure the right kind of Regulation are key but we also emphasize that political inclusion meaning a framework in which people people have voice power is equally distributed and not monopolized by one group one person one party are key and political and Economic Institutions are synergistic it's very difficult to maintain economic inclusion when you are ruled by the Iron Fist of an autocrat and that's the sense in which we also find and some of the work that for example I did with Jim Robinson sures Naidu and Pascal Restrepo that democracy directly itself contributes to economic growth not easily not right right away it takes a couple of years and it's a difficult business to make democracy work but generally countries that democratize grow faster and they grow the more Right Way meaning they grow in a way that's more equal invest more in education and health so so both political and economic inclusion matter and they are synergistic so so I would just add Daran I got I had a phone call from China this morning from beij journalist from Beijing who said what's your advice for the Chinese economy and I my first thought was okay what can I say that a she might be able to use and c will won't get into trouble uh and I I think that the the the basic um finding that we have in our historical work is that yes you can have episodes of growth uh under different Arrangements but if you want to sustain that growth over time it's much stronger and much more robust if you can move towards the kind of inclusive participation that drawn just outlined and I would I would flag for example South Korea which is where my wife family is from South Korea started out poor after World War II in fact in the early 1960s it was very poor it was quite authoritarian at the beginning over time there was economic growth and an effort to democratize which was difficult and messy and and there are plenty of struggles it's not an easy Journey but I think as a result uh South Korean economy which is not again not without its problems today but it's a much better shape and their achievements are really remarkable compared to what some other countries have been able to pull off so I think that that's the direction daring in which our our work I think should should Orient people thank you and congratulations to you both thank you thank you all very much I'm now opening the line for S host song of yonhap news agency the floor is yours uh first of all congratulations uh to both professors uh I understand um Dr Johnson you briefly mentioned the South Korea's case but I understand that two separate um institutions on the crime Peninsula one in the South and the other in the north have been subject of your longtime research as shown in your book uh why Nations fail so can you um share with us uh your thoughts on the future of South Korea's economic and social trajectory and how it can continue to remain on a successful trajectory through institutional improvements and can you also give us your suggestions Visa um how North Korea can change course toward a better future away from the current impoverished and repressive um conditions and where do you think North Korea will end up to be if it continues to be on the current path thank you and my question of course goes to both uh professors thank you well first of all why Nation fair was written by donon and Jim Robinson not by me I am always happy to be confused with Jim Robinson even more so today I suppose than other days uh but Don do you want to take that first as as as you did write that book well I mean uh yeah yeah uh and in fact South Korea versus North Korea contrast is at the very beginning of the book because it beautifully illustrates the role of Institutions uh the South and the north according to the best data we have were on a par before the country was separated and diverg in terms of its instit tions and over time a more than tfold difference built up South Korea exactly like Simon said is not without problems uh democratization was very difficult but you know the evidence that for example we have in our democracy and growth paper shows uh South Korean e economy picked up speed after democratization and did so in a more healthy way but right now South Korea is still uh dominated by large corporations which brings some benefits and some costs and uh uh and and some Korea is dealing with one of the most rapidly aging populations it has done reasonably well in that context by using a combination of Technologies and and other uh adjustments but it is a very difficult transition China will undergo it as well but a country that's aging so rapidly is going to face uh many new challenges and uh and and openness to new ideas new technologies is going to be very important in the case of South Korea doing so via a competitive pressure is going to be more important as well and I don't hold very great hope for North Korea its uh system is cemented at least for now and and the advice to North Korea well who's the advice going to go to I think one of the emphasis of our work has been look institutions are bad because they serve certain people's interests uh they are bad often for society but quite lucrative for the people who control the institutions and North Korea is again a Cas in point I don't think it is very fruitful to give advice to the North Korean Elite and the North Korean people are under great oppression right now but I think that system is uh facing more and more difficulties and one day hopefully it will Unite with South Korea and under a more democratic uh system yeah I I would just add i i attended a conference in Soul on managing the economic transition and political transition presumably in North Korea away from communism it was a good conference great discussion lots of substance it was 30 years ago 30-0 so I think as Dr said when when when an in when a s this collapse of the Soviet Empire had some KnockOn effects the reforms in China were consequential and that also affected other countries but North Korea retreated into its into its shell and has created a system that obviously favors a very few people um and a lot of people in North Korea suff over many years and and these few people are heavily armed and they've acquired or built for themselves a lot of nuclear weapon capacity and and also some rocket launch capacity that's not insignificant this is extremely dangerous and just because better stronger institutions give you more inclusive growth and allow more people to climb out of poverty does not mean that all leaderships want to embrace such institutions on the contrary uh many leaderships around the world have gone in in another Direction in recent years so there there are many there are many things to worry about in the North Korean situation thank you thank you very much our next question comes from Jeff keing I believe gbh radio news let us know Jeff your Line's open uh yes Jeff keing gbh uh here in Boston for radio um congratulations congratulations to you both can you please just describe the moment when you first heard the news I got a text from Kimberly uh this Swedish the academy assures me they're trying to reach me early this morning and uh I guess I have no record of that on my phone but so I heard from my social network which feels not inappropriate actually for 2024 well I'm in Athens right now and I was on the balcony of my hotel room thank you I'm pleased to take one from the from the website um Alex Tang editor-in chief of the tech congratulations to you both from an educational and mentorship perspective I would like to ask how each of you approaches teaching this thorough approach to political economy to the undergraduate or the graduate student how do you balance the study of history with an analysis of a never-changing and turbulent present fantastic question from our MIT student I I I'll take that first because I I teach most of the mbaas drawn and I did a course for undergraduates last year that was a lot of fun but most you have taught under mbas and mbas are fantastic students I think some of them are here but they I think they'll agree that they're always about okay how do I use this why is that useful knowledge show me what what what this means so that's that's where I get pushed kimbery uh and and Alex that's why I get pushed all the time by my classrooms and I'd like to thank all of my many thousands it turns out of MIT students for pushing me in in in that direction because it it really helps sharpen the way you communicate these ideas and also the way that you that you you think about it sometimes people say research and teaching can be disassociated including in Business Schools that's not been my experience at all in MIT for me they're very deeply intertwined although I do not show regression results to my mbaas I'll be quite candid about that I've got to find other ways to communicate the Big Ideas well that's a fantastic question and uh it's still work in progress I go back and forth how to sort of balance different aspects of the of the work but the part that I find very uplifting is posing the questions I think the questions about long-term economic growth the fast Gap that exists between rich and poor Nations how the world has diverged and has it failed to share Prosperity I think those are such major questions that it brings people in undergraduates and graduates alike so just to put a point on that we're the United States is about 335 million people I think by far the most Innovative Society in the history of humankind plenty of problems don't get me wrong but we live in a world of 8 billion people with Within enous un unaddressed problems and we develop all this technology we're very good at developing technology including at MIT including other places but whose problem are we trying to solve whose vision is driving that who's making the choices about technology and this is what Dron and I have been hammering away on for the past five years and that's what our latest book is all about which is people who control technology people who think deeply about technology the scientists and yes Engineers who drive these processes have an enormous effect on on the world both in terms of who gets access to what opportunity but also then through institutions who gets to build what kind of generally Democratic and inclusive Society very interesting thank you our next question comes from Paulo hello master Lily the floor is yours thank you very much congratulation thank you for doing this briefing um I would like to ask you a question about the European Union there have been a signific Paulo can you state your outlet please oh yes uh I'm the US bureau chief for the Italian Daily La Republic so there's been a significant backlash against the European Union in recent year brexit political parties in European country that are against the European Union also backlash in the US particularly with the previous administration with President Trump do you think that the European Union is still useful as an institution and what reform would you suggest it needs to take undertake to be a better institution well well donon is actually in the European right now and needs to be able to leave on his own terms tomorrow morning so I'm going to let him take the first cut of that well the European Union also gained a Nobel Prize uh I think it was about 10 years ago for their contribution to peace uh and it is true I think the European Union is an amazingly successful project it was started as a way of easing tensions that people thought were inevitable just like that led to World War I and World War II but more broadly it is an effort to build supranational institutions because many of the problems we encounter and that was obvious after World War II are Global in nature domestic institutions are all good and well but we need also supranational Global institutions and it's difficult business to build institutions I mentioned democracy democracy is going through a very very tough stretch the support for for democracy is at an alltime law across the industrialized World despite the fact that I think democracy is still essential and does quite well in general so I don't find it surprising that the project of European Union is difficult and mistakes are always made but today I think we need the European Union even more than ever because we need different approaches to technology different approaches to globalization and uh different regulatory instincts and we need a multi-polar world I think for all of these reasons I still believe the European project is relevant and essential but of course it's not going to be one- siiz fits all I don't find it surprising that some people are going to want out of the European Union and that is an ongoing challenge that European politicians will have to navigate so so what I would say what I would add to that poo is well while we shouldn't uh excessively obsess about the impact of Europe and Europeans on on world history surely the the the biggest change to the state of the world over the past um 7 80 years is that Europeans West Europeans no longer fight each other if you read about World War I and I I read extensively because I think that was the beginning of a very very difficult Century a lot of creative impulses a lot of building of peaceful societies got diverted into an incredible confrontation with the development of of Technology including chemical weapons in in in in in including ways of delivering High explosives people at Great distances and so on that that we're still living with and and the fact that the the European Union exists today and grew out of that essentially stopped the France and Germany agreed not to fight and other people joined them in that I think that's a huge accomplishment and we shouldn't lose track of that and we shouldn't forget it and as Russia presses very hard on a European country which is Ukraine that's not a member of the European Union we we and particularly Europeans need to focus on that and understand that the extent and and the importance of that challenge so I'm a big fan of the European Union what has accomplished at the same time Paulo we run at MIT um for our executive mbas a simulation every year in fact we're about to run the next one on the next phase of the Euro area crisis I understand the Euro area European Union are separate but you also know how they're over overlapping and I will just say that we started running this simulation uh more than a decade ago and we always thought this will be the last year in which we can run a plausible next phase of the Euro crisis and every year we got fresh material and every year we've got new pressures and every year the students have to think through the macroeconomic responses this is with aasis orphanides my Greek cypriate colleague who was previously um a member of the governing Council of the European Central Bank and so on so I I think it's never over Paulo the problems are always there before us and you just have to face them and confront them and go forward towards them on the basis of stronger institutions better democracy and and believing that you should defend these systems against internal forces of of of chaos and and and worse and and external forces because there are many people in the world who who do not wish the European and and Western Europe well and and and those those forces need to be resisted I always love going to school taking class with the laurates here so we're in our last 10 minutes or so I'm going to try to take a couple more from the chat um this is from Wendy Maldonado who you may recall Professor Johnson your for one of your former MBA students she asked would you please comment on the role of women in economic participation and how that has affected the overall economies of the societies you've studied positively or negatively have you seen progress and change in a positive direction over time um or could you point any example to any examples of countries that have done it particularly well and have enjoyed stronger economies as a result any examples in emerging economies in particular so there's a lot there unpack the pieces you want keep it tight um but thank you so that's a great question Wendy and and and very important of course CL golden won a Nobel Prize not too long ago for really digging deeply into into all of all of these topics and her work I commend to everybody uh for deeper investigation or study an understanding of this this question I I think that the um the the rising voice and and power and opportunity for for women in this country over the past 100 years is absolutely fundamental has changed everything I I have two daughters and and I think they have great prosp ects and opportunities including in science and technology actually um that are just thrilling and and that's got to be good for the world and of course many women and girls around the world don't have those same opportunities and I think that's that's a major problem it holds back you can think in economic terms you can think in political terms you can think in human terms so it's something to be to be overcome and um I met actually I should remark for Sally I I met with alumni not too long ago who told me that she was one of only two women in the MIT class of 1952 or 1953 and now our classrooms are are very evenly balanced and and the contributions are evenly balanced and this is an amazing achievement which I thank the leadership at MIT over multiple multiple generations and and I I think everyone should attempt to move in in the same direction to the extent that they can and to the extent that it works in in in in their situation we've never said it's one size fits all or there's one magic wand to be to be waved but I do think increasing rights and Privileges and opportunities for for women has helped everybody in the United States and I think it can has helped other places too and I and I think it's I hope that that it will absolutely continue and strengthen around the world well let me amplify that just with one two two thoughts uh one is you know uh we are in the age of AI but I remain and I think Simon does too convinced that you know human productivity human ingenuity Human Resources broadly construed are still key for flourishing and meaningful flourishing of countries and any country that does not value and that doesn't leverage it doesn't create opportunities for its women is essentially degrading half of its resources in that fight uh and and and no country in the 20th century has succeeded while doing so and I think that will be even more so in the 21st century thanks to you both our next question comes from Martin sandbu at the financial times Martin your line is open hi can you hear me we hear you very good Martin sander from the Ft Simon and own congratulations um my question is whether you could State your view of the current trajectory of institutions in the liberal Democratic societies are we on course for more extractive institutional forms or to maintain our inclusive institutions and in particular what do you make of the case that I think many people believe and that's at least plausible case that we are moving in the direction of more autocratic more oligarchic institutions with the Electoral support of people who are disappointed by how inclusive so-called institutions uh inclusive institutions have delivered for them economically and believe better economic promises from those who are heading in an extractive Direction thanks very much Martin uh uh you're you're right to be worried uh because that is a real danger uh if you and this is something I have done research on recently if you look at support for democracy in the industrialized world it's an alltime law people are much more willing to say they would be okay or they would support an authoritarian regime or dictatorship a military rule or rule by a h and if you dig deeper it is at least in part rooted in their disappointment with democracy democracy hasn't realized its promise of voice for all and shared prosperity for all and we find that democracies perform better they get more support when they deliver on their promises such as clean governance without corruption more shared Prosperity better public services and so on and uh and there are many other dimensions of democracy's failure but despite all of that democracies still have done better than dictatorships so it's not that there is a better alternative out there but it is very important that Democratic institutions renew their social contract with the people and by the people I mean a broad constituency not just a few selected groups uh but but but the working class especially and I think that is going to be key for a renewal of democracy it will take time it will be particularly different difficult in the age of polarization in the age of social media which really poisons much of our discussions and political discourse but I am still not optimistic in the sense that it will happen by itself it didn't happen automatically but I'm hopeful uh Democratic institutions have shown great resilience and great Ingenuity and so have people and and that combination I think if it can free itself from the worst sins of our current Epoch in particular polarization demonization of the rest and the impoverished spaces communication spaces of social media I think there's a lot of potential there so so I would add Martin first of all thanks for the your columns that you write on on this topic really very helpful I commend them to everybody here and more broadly I I think that um you're of course right that the pressures over the past 40 plus years from automation globalization the decline of trade they' really undermined the middle and pressed a lot of people down from that middle to the lower end of the labor market our colleague David order with whom John and I run a research group at MIT has a very famous graph that shows earnings for people with a lot of Education have gone up since the 1960s in real terms but not for people in the middle and people with less education or didn't go to college in in real terms may actually be earning less than they did in the 1960s that's extremely disappointing and and that's a failure to deliver and I think all societies are naturally held to account for that and that includes this this democracy um but it is incredibly important to emphasize Martin the choices that we make now about both the development of new technology artificial intelligence that's one of the things that donon and I wrote about in our latest book but also the the rules of the game in electoral democracy you know if you don't like the composition of the US Supreme Court in the United States there are many ways to work to change that within the rules they may be difficult ways it may be a heavy lift but there's ways to change it but rejecting the result of a free and fair election refusing to acknowledge that result or encouraging people to attack Congress when it's a process of formally validating that vote that's not acceptable those are choices made by politically by prominent people by important people those moves that kinds of actions can absolutely undermine destroy any democracy we've seen that many times around the world it takes a long time to build strong institutions it doesn't take long to overthrow them if you really put your mind to it so once again the US a a wonderful country a country I'm proud to to have joined and very happy to be an American citizen to I work long and hard to become an American citizen thank you MIT for that as well um you know we've had a bumpy ride on democracy and what happens next in in the November election is extremely consequential for whether we can sustain our better stronger institutions and and have more shared Prosperity going forward so I think our next question from a visiting fellow at Sloan helps us get to how we get more people to listen to y'all and hear this um Sarah bin mafu visiting fellow at Sloan asks what a wonderful opportunity to join you for this congrats she's a visiting fellow given the current state of the global economy what areas of economic research do you think are most crucial for the next generation of economists to explore and how do you bridge the gap between research and policy implementation did I get started Simon do you want to go yeah go ahead go ahead well I mean I think there are a number of challenges the whole world is facing right now uh I believe we know some things about those but much more need is needed AI how the workforce will adjust to it how the future of work will adjust to it inequality an aging population which is you know the world has never aged as it has done now and how we're going to work with that climate change but also more sort of usual problems that we've been struggling with you know around the world the Middle East Africa still there are such divisions and such insecurity that building anything approaching a vibrant economy is completely impossible for hundreds of millions of people so some way of bringing peace around the world and building more uh Stronger institutions From the Ashes of the very difficult times that many different parts of the world have I think that's going to be a continuing challenge my my bumper sticker Sarah for this whole 25 years or more of work is more good jobs find ways to create more good jobs in your own Community around this country other countries spread the prosperity that way and and as I have the undivided attention of the president of MIT here I I will say that um without risk of contradiction that more uh effort into Science and Technology more invention more commercialization that invention and having the value of wanting to create Better Lives for people both in terms of how the technology is used and the jobs that you create in that Technology Innovation process and in its deployment that's what that's what we've done really well okay figuring it out muddling through no doubt over the past 100 plus years around MIT when I was a grad student by the way the area around MIT known as Kendall Square was not in great shape and has really been transformed by a lot of Technology Investments and that's fantastic we need more of that we need aund of those we need a thousand of those and it needs to be constructive to address the problems that donon just identified for you so who sets priorities who has the vision who makes the choices if that if we don't do that at MIT where else will people do it and I think we do it at MIT and we need to do more of it and thank you Sally for your for your leadership including on climate and pushing us all absolutely in this direction thanks to you both we have one more from journalists then we'll try to get in one or two from former students and then we can call it a wrap so Thomas fisherman I think we might be going we're going back to Europe the line is open yes hello it's Thomas fisherman from deite and I guess that uh my question is very much uh related to the question from the Ft um we um we see all these countries with perfectly good institutions and reasonable growth Decon con struct their own institutions in a way and this goes through populism which has been mentioned so my question is uh what kind of research agenda do we need to look at the long-term Dynamics there uh do we know enough do we have enough research in place to learn about the long-term self-destruction of democracies and are there alternatives to this I just spent a weekend in Singapore everybody tell told me that they have a much better long-term plan for suppressing any populism this thank you uh well I think we have a lot of historical examples of long-term decline of institutions of very different types including democracies but of course alternatives to democracy you know that's very difficult to study with historical data or with empirical data imagination and experimentation and I think like local level but I also don't think the right word is suppressing populism I think populism often is fed by Grievances and suppressing them gets makes things worse so understanding in populism and turning those grievances into a more positive force rather than the negative force that they become under populism is necessary you asked a very very very good question direct question Thomas I attt to to address it directly I think there's two major areas for research one is about technology how technology develops how it's deployed how it's used around the world the choices that we make about technology and how we can get better outcomes defined I would suggest for instance through more good jobs um that I think is a very big research area that Dron and I and and David otter are embarked on and so many other absolutely Talent of people at MIT and elsewhere the second and and I think you can get a lot of agreement on that not an awkward topic really the second topic I mean let me be fairly pointed and and blunt in the interest of time here it's corruption corruption has two sides the people who pay the bribes and the people who take the bribes there's a lot of hand ringing in rich countries about corruption there's a lot of criticism of other places and so on and so forth and surely that is that is Justified and many of our Rich societies have cleaned themselves up in terms of internal corruption but who pays the bribes who's who's who's putting the money out there to get people to borrow more money to get them to build infrastructure they don't need to pad their bank accounts in whatever way this is a scorge and and this undermines attempts to build resilient uh institutions I I would say because it says to people look if you get if you get power and hold power for a few years you can become very rich and then live in ex YZ country tax Haven whatever so I think the these are the these are the real problems that we need to confront Thomas and and um I I think that anybody who wants to really dig into this and really confront and really answer the question how do you control and eliminate and remove corruption which by the way Singapore did and and Kudos stood them for it right but not all authoritarian countries have managed to do that in fact most authoritarian countries okay I didn't just call Singapore authoritarian be careful and how you quote there many authoritarian countries have struggled with um controlling corruption because it's just easy money and you you nobody stops you and it's the rich countries many in many instances that are paying for access to your raw materials your natural resources your oil or very very cheap labor great question thank you very much and one going back to some a topic that came up a little earlier from the webcast from Muhammad Hassan J A Worcester Polytechnic Institute Fullbright scholar congratulations on the marvelous achievement my question is how do you see climate change impacting short and long-term economic growth and the role it plays in exacerbating The Divide between the rich and the poor and what needs to be done to address it well climate change is exacerbating the divide both between poor and Rich Nations and between poor and rich people within a nation because they have different resources to deal and adapt to change but climate change is also an opportunity uh renewable Technologies are an amazing source of productivity growth and even a modicum of investment and a modicum of Civil Society support for these technologies have had transformative effects uh so I think uh we should welcome the climate change not the climate change per se but the climate change challenge I think there's much more to be done but in line with the previous questions about inclusion populism it cannot be done by Fiat it cannot be done by imposing it on workers you need to bring the workers uh into the fold as well you need to convince people that they are going to benefit from it and it's not going to be something that are going to be forced into at the cost of their good jobs and it's not something that is just dictated to them from above and I think that's that's again a challenge for democracy yes I I think that the recent tragic events around the two hurricane particularly the devastation in North Carolina where where I I lived in North Carolina for 5 years it's absolutely heartbreaking and and it should remind us that nobody is exempt even rich countries are going to be faced with with with terrible terrible problems here a and I I think that there are one answer on the on the what to do about climate change is about policy and changing policy and there are things that can be done now and of course it's a long list and and they're not being done um for reasons that we can discuss but the other piece that's super important is is is really um swing for the fences aim for the Breakthrough signs change the world again and I'm looking at Sally corlu as I say this because she's doing this um I think that sometimes people say well that's the scientists and those are strange ideas and we don't know if they'll come to FR well no actually we've transformed the world many times with technology invented in and around major research universities in the United States so now we need to do it again well you know what we we we've experience with have a track record We Know What It Takes and we need to do more of it and we need to make sure as Don is emphasizing today and he's as he's emphasized in the 25 years that I've known him consistently it's got to be done in an inclusive manner this is not about helping a few Elites become billionaires that's not the goal here the goal is well I think it's the question suggest the goal is Save the Planet help a lot of poor people prevent the sea from rising in a way that would be catastrophic to to millions of if not tens and hundreds of millions of people that's a tough agenda but I think we know how to do it and and I'm I'm I'm really pleased to be associate continue to be associate with MIT and all of mit's efforts in this direction thank you both so much we are going to give the final question today we're going to end with MIT alumna rashma Patel MIT economics class of 1993 and I think it it it's a nice recap from what you all have been saying what can the average person do to strengthen our Democratic institutions doesn't democracy only work if we all participate in it I I'll take this one first Dron thing as you just sing water uh yes absolutely I that that's that's the essence that's what we've learned over 250 years there's a lot of people who want who want you to stay on the sidelines there's a lot of people who say well your voice doesn't matter I think the the strongest Societies in the world have been built from the ground up um and and it's it's a struggle it's always hard look nothing about this Democratic process nothing about inclusive Prosperity has come easily to anyone including the UK the US European Union which we've talked about so there's a lot of hard work head and and and as as some of the questions emphasized this is a tough moment a challenging moment a moment of of stress test but yes it is the choices that need to be made about technology and about political outcomes rest with us and and it's it's a responsibility that we that we need to take seriously and and if our research has has pushed people in that direction and if today's incredible amazing prize award helps raise awareness than I think all the work we've done over the past two and a half decades has been worth it well let me end by saying three things two non-controversial pretty obvious and one perhaps a little more controversial one participate that's what democracy needs two avoid uh demonizing the other side try to understand the other side so that there is better communication that's what democracy is about but third I think walk away from all social media and media sources that try to polarize us that's only by people walking away and not rewarding these really pricious sources of echo Chambers polarization pollution of communication that we can actually fix the system we should stop rewarding them thank you all so much um and that will be the final word today thank you all for joining us congratulations once again to today's laurates thank you president corn Bluth for being here with us as well um on behalf of the whole MIT Community have a great day guys enjoy it thank you so much Kim thanks to everyone bye-bye bye bye

2024-10-19 21:43

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