A Nobel prize for economic history?

This short note deals with the contribution of the 2024 Nobel laureates, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson to economic history. It frames the theoretical underpinning of their work within the Northian tradition of analysis of institutions and discusses the development of persistence studies stemming from their seminal paper on the Colonial origins of comparative development (Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson 2001). The final section argues that this Nobel prize differs from previous awards to Robert Fogel and Douglass North (1993) and Claudia Goldin (2023) because persistence studies do not address economic history research questions..