Nobel economics prize goes to researchers explaining innovation-driven economic growth


By KOSTYA MANENKOV and MIKE CORDER, Associated Press

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt won the Nobel memorial prize in economics Monday for their research into the impact of innovation on economic growth and how new technologies replace older ones, a key economic concept known as “creative destruction.”

The winners represent contrasting but complementary approaches to economics. Mokyr is an economic historian who delved into long-term trends using historical sources, while Howitt and Aghion relied on mathematics to explain how creative destruction works.

Professor John Hassler, from left, Hans Ellegren, Permanent Secretary of the Academy of Sciences and Professor Kerstin Enflo, announce Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt as the recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics during a press conference at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. (Anders Wiklund/TT News Agency via AP)

Dutch-born Mokyr, 79, is from Northwestern University; Aghion, 69, from the Collège de France and the London School of Economics; and Canadian-born Howitt, 79, from Brown University.

Mokyr was still trying to get his morning coffee when he was reached on the phone by an AP reporter, and said he was shocked to win the prize.

“People always say this, but in this case I am being truthful — I had no clue that anything like this was going to happen,” he said.

His students had asked him about the possibility he would win the Nobel, he said. “I told them that I was more likely to be elected Pope than to win the Nobel Prize in economics — and I am Jewish by the way.”

Mokyr will turn 80 next summer but said he has no plans to retire. “This is the type of job that I dreamed about my entire life,” he said.

Aghion said he was shocked by the honor. “I can’t find the words to express what I feel,” he said by phone to the press conference in Stockholm. He said he would invest his prize money in his research laboratory.



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