Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt won the 2025 Nobel economics prize yesterday for their work on how innovation and the forces of ‘creative destruction’ can drive economic growth and lift living standards across the globe.
Their research explains how technology gives rise to new products and production methods which replace old ones, resulting in a better standard of living, health and quality of life.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the prize, said the laureates had also shown that such progress cannot be taken for granted.
“Economic stagnation, not growth, has been the norm for most of human history. Their work shows that we must be aware of, and counteract, threats to continued growth,” the Academy said.
The prize winners themselves highlighted challenges from US President Donald Trump’s trade policies and his administration’s higher education reforms which are considered by some as an attack on academic freedom.
While most economists view economic growth as a driver of prosperity, there are some who do not see it as an unalloyed good.
The 2024 Economics prize was won by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson for work on inequality and Johnson in particular has pointed to how the benefits of technological innovation can be skewed toward powerful elites.
There is also a fierce debate about what level of growth is sustainable in light of man-made climate change and environmental degradation.
The prestigious award, formally known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, is the final prize to be given out this year and is worth 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million).
Mokyr, a professor at Northwestern University in the US, was awarded half the prize.
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