Economics 2025 · Announced Oct 13
Joel Mokyr
An economic historian of why the modern world got rich.
Born 1946 · Netherlands / Israel / United States · Northwestern University
33 yrs
The wait, from the Aghion–Howitt growth model (1992) to the prize
1946
Year born
3
People sharing this prize
Oct 13
Announced in 2025
Their part in the prize
Mokyr, a historian, showed what let growth keep going after the Industrial Revolution: science and know-how feeding each other. Aghion and Howitt built the math of creative destruction, where new firms and products push out old ones.
Why it matters
Growth is not automatic. It needs openness to new ideas and room for change, and it can stall when those are lost.
The road to the prize
- 1990Mokyr publishes The Lever of Riches.
- 1992Aghion and Howitt publish their model of growth through creative destruction.
- 2002Mokyr publishes The Gifts of Athena.
- 2025Prize in Economic Sciences.
Shared with
The official reason for all 3: "for having explained innovation-driven economic growth"