Economics

Political Institutions and the Wealth of Nations: Nobel Laureate James Robinson at Luiss Research Day

The University of Rome invited the British economist to the capital to discuss the link between the organisation of political power and the prosperity of states

by Pietro Menzani

26 October 2026

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3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Why have some nations managed to achieve and maintain significant levels of prosperity whilst others have not? This was the question that kicked off this year’s Luiss Research Day, but it is also the question that inspired the research which earned James Robinson, the event’s special guest, the Nobel Prize in Economics. In his speech, Robinson, drawing on specific case studies – South Korea, Rwanda and Great Britain – reflected on the relationship between the organisation of political power within a society and its capacity for economic progress. During the event, held in the Aula Chiesa on the university’s Viale Romania campus in Rome, Luiss Rector Paolo Boccardelli presented the Nobel laureate with the Luiss Research Award.

Forms of government and prosperity

The aim of Research Day, which Stefano Manzocchi, Vice-Rector for Research at Luiss, described as ‘an opportunity to link our areas of research with the international debate and to foster, within our university, a productive dialogue between the social sciences, the humanities, the law faculty and the Department of Artificial Intelligence’, was to explore how to lay the foundations, at a political level, to facilitate the material progress of a society.

Paolo Boccardelli, the University’s Vice-Chancellor, opened the proceedings by emphasising the importance of asking why, if prosperity stems from investment, training and innovation, some societies invest, train and innovate more than others. Understanding how institutions evolve, Boccardelli reiterated, has in fact become central to understanding the drivers of economic development.

The Vice-Chancellor explained that our country is one of the most industrialised in Europe and the world; it is Europe’s second-largest manufacturing nation, the world’s fourth-largest exporter, and has a strong tradition in the fields of technology and science. However, he noted that behind these figures lie limited productivity growth, modest social mobility and substantial regional disparities: ‘It is precisely here that rigorous academic research can make an important contribution,’ he observed, reiterating that ‘the university has a responsibility to advance knowledge’. In addition to Robinson, the Luiss Research Day featured numerous other leading figures from the field of economics, ranging from Raquel Fernandez to Josiah Ober, including Hans-Joachim Voth, Guido Tabellini and Luigi Pascali, a full professor at Luiss.

Robinson’s research

The aim of Robinson’s research is precisely to understand which forms of government facilitate the achievement of prosperity. “We are trying to understand how to create more effective governments in developing countries, and how to establish a state capable of providing the public goods the population needs,” explained the Nobel laureate.

Robinson, a British economist at the University of Chicago, was awarded the most prestigious prize in the field of economics in 2024 alongside Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, and is co-author, with Acemoglu himself, of renowned works such as *Why Nations Fail* and *The Chokepoint*.

‘My research,’ he continued, ‘shows that there are many different ways to achieve this objective. People think there is only one way to have an effective state, but we are trying to demonstrate, through concrete examples, that there are different ways to build ‘state capacity’ and to ensure that people cooperate with the state in producing public goods. The idea is that countries have a range of options open to them for achieving development.”

Extractive and inclusive institutions

As Giulia Tura, a lecturer in the Department of Economics and Financial Markets at Luiss, explained, Robinson’s research has made two particularly significant contributions to economic knowledge. Firstly, it demonstrated that it is institutions – described by the American economist Douglass North as the ‘rules of the game’ – that shape a nation’s prosperity. Secondly, it described institutions as endogenous, explaining how they arise and according to what criteria they evolve over time.

Robinson and his co-authors have shown how the institutions that took root during the colonial period created disparities in prosperity that persist to this day, identifying specifically two types of institutions: inclusive institutions, which protected the colonists’ right to private property and limited arbitrary expropriations, thereby encouraging investment in new technologies and skills; and extractive institutions, which, by contrast, concentrated economic power and opportunities for growth in the hands of a narrow elite, thereby weakening incentives for innovation. These divergent paths, according to the Nobel laureate, have shaped the trajectories of economic development for the societies concerned.

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