This year's Nobel Prize for economic sciences has been awarded to three professors based in the United States. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences praised them for helping to explain inequality around the world.

Daron Acemoglu is a Turkish-American economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Simon Johnson is also at MIT. James A. Robinson works at the University of Chicago.

Acemoglu and Robinson collaborated on a book titled "Why Nations Fail," which seeks to explain the link between prosperity and political systems.

The academy says the three laureates have pioneered new approaches to significantly advance the understanding of global inequality.

The academy also says they have demonstrated why poor rule of law and exploitation do not generate growth or positive change.