On expected lines, this year’s Economics Nobel, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize awarded for economic sciences, was awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson (famously known as AJR) for their studies on how institutions are formed and how they affect prosperity. Their work made the study and discourse on institutions relevant again in the context of mainstream economics.
The Nobel Committee's paper states, "The laureates’ model for explaining the circumstances under which political institutions are formed and changed has three components. The first is a conflict over how resources are allocated and who holds decision-making power in a society (the elite or the masses). The second is that the masses sometimes have the opportunity to exercise power by mobilising and threatening the ruling elite; power in a society is thus more than the power to make decisions. The third is the commitment problem, which means that the only alternative is for the elite to hand over decision-making power to the populace."
These components, along with modelled reasoning, have helped explain the differences in economic prosperity between and within nations.