Joel, Philippe and Peter Win 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics for Explaining Innovation-Driven Growth

The Nobel Prize in Economics 2025 was awarded to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth.”

According to the Nobel Committee, one half of the prize goes to Joel Mokyr “for identifying the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress,” while the other half is shared by Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt “for their theory of sustained growth through creative destruction.”

Joel Mokyr, a Dutch-Israeli-American economic historian at Northwestern University, has used historical evidence to explain how societies transitioned from stagnation to self-sustaining economic growth.

Aghion and Howitt, meanwhile, developed a mathematical model in 1992 describing the process of creative destruction, where new innovations replace outdated technologies, driving progress but also disrupting existing industries.

The Nobel Committee noted that their work has shaped modern understanding of how innovation fuels economic development, influencing government policies on research, regulation, and market competition.