Mokyr, Aghion and Howitt win Nobel economics prize

14 OCTOBER 2025

Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt won the 2025 Nobel economics prize for “having explained innovation-driven economic growth”, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.
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 Kronor ($1.2 million).
“The laureates have taught us that sustained growth cannot be taken for granted,” the prize-awarding body said in a statement. 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.”
Joel Mokyr used historical observations to identify the factors necessary for sustained growth based on technological innovations.
“Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt produced a mathematical model of creative destruction, an endless process in which new and better products replace the old.”
Other Nobel prizes were established in the will of Swedish dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel and have been handed out since 1901, with a few interruptions mostly due to the world wars.
The economics prize was established much later, being given out first in 1969.