Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt have been awarded the 2025 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025 for their contributions to innovation-driven economic growth. Mokyr’s share recognises his work on technological progress, while Aghion and Howitt are honoured for their theory on creative destruction.
Who is Joel Mokyr?
Born on 26 July 1946, Mokyr is affiliated with Northwestern University, Evanston, at the time of the award. He has been honoured “for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress.”
Joel Mokyr researches Europe’s economic history, focusing on 1750-1914. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, the Cliometric Society, the British Academy, the Italian Accademia dei Lincei, and the Dutch Royal Academy.
He has served as President of the Economic History Association, edited the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, and co-edited the Journal of Economic History. In 2006, he received the Heineken Award for History from the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, a biennial honour, and in 2015, he was awarded the Balzan International Prize for economic history.
Mokyr has supervised over forty doctoral dissertations in the departments of Economics and History.
Who is Peter Howitt?
Peter Howitt was awarded the Nobel Prize“for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction.”
Peter Howitt is a Professor of Economics and the Lyn Crost Professor of Social Sciences at Brown University. He served on the faculty of the University of Western Ontario from 1972 to 1996 and at Ohio State University from 1996 to 2000.
Most of his research focuses on macroeconomics and monetary economics. He is a key contributor to the development of the modern “Schumpeterian” approach to economic growth theory. He has actively sought new foundations in macroeconomics and monetary theory and has written extensively on Canadian monetary policy.
Who is Philippe Aghion?
Born on 17 August 1956, Philippe Aghion is a Professor at the Collège de France and INSEAD, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics, and a fellow of both the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been honoured with the Nobel Prize for Economics for “for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction.”
His research concentrates on the economics of growth. Along with Peter Howitt, he worked on the Schumpeterian Growth paradigm, which was later used to analyse the design of growth policies and the role of the state in the growth process.
