Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt have won the Nobel Prize in Economics 2025, announced the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Monday. Half of the prize money goes to Mokyr, while the other half will be shared by Aghion and Howitt.
The three economists were awarded for demonstrating how technological progress has led to sustained economic growth, resulting in a better standard of living, health, and quality of life, as reported by The New York Times.
Mokyr (79 years old) from Northwestern University (Illinois, USA) received half of the 11 million Swedish crowns prize (almost 1.2 million dollars) "for identifying the premises for sustained growth through technological progress," stated the Nobel committee.
Aghion (69 years old, from Collège de France, Paris) and Howitt (79 years old, from Brown University, Rhode Island, USA) shared the other half of the prize for what the committee described as "the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction."
A Concept from the '40s, Explained Now
The winners were rewarded for explaining "creative destruction," a key concept in economics that refers to the process by which beneficial innovations replace - and thus destroy - older technologies and businesses. The concept is usually associated with economist Joseph Schumpeter, who emphasized it in his 1942 book, "Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy."
Aghion said he was shocked by this honor. "I cannot find the words to express how I feel," he said over the phone at the press conference in Stockholm. He mentioned that he will invest the prize money in his research lab.
When asked about the current trade wars and the spreading protectionism worldwide, Aghion said, "I do not welcome the protectionist path in the USA. This is not good for global growth and innovation."
A Special Nobel
The Nobel Prize in Economics is officially known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The central bank established it in 1968 as a tribute to Nobel, the Swedish businessman and chemist from the 19th century who invented dynamite and founded the five Nobel Prizes.
Since then, the Nobel Prize in Economics has been awarded 56 times to a total of 96 laureates. Only three of the winners have been women.
Purists of the Nobel Prize consider that the economics prize is not, technically speaking, a true Nobel, but this distinction is always awarded together with the others on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.
Last year's prize was won by three economists - Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson - who studied why some countries are rich while others are poor and documented that freer and more open societies are more likely to prosper.
This year, the following Nobel Prizes were awarded:
- Nobel Prize in Physics 2025, awarded to a trio of researchers for revolutionary discoveries in quantum mechanics
- Nobel Prize in Medicine 2025, awarded to researchers who paved the way for cancer and autoimmune disease treatments
- Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025 won by three researchers. What discovery did they make
- Nobel Prize in Literature 2025, won by Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai, who "amid apocalyptic terror reaffirms the power of art"
Nobel Peace Prize 2025, won by Maria Corina Machado, for "her tireless work in promoting democratic rights for the Venezuelan people
T.D.