Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, first published in 2012, is a book by Turkish-American economist Daron Acemoglu and British-American economist James A. Robinson, who in 2024 jointly received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (alongside Simon Johnson) for their contribution in comparative studies of prosperity between nations. The book applies insights from institutional economics, development economics, and economic history to understand why nations develop differently, with some succeeding in the accumulation of power and prosperity and others failing. The authors present a wide range of historical case studies from all over the world.
The authors maintain a website with a blog inactive since 2014 about the discussion of the book.[3]