Nobel economics prize goes to 3 researchers for explaining innovation-driven economic growth

Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt won the Nobel memorial prize in economics Monday for “having explained innovation-driven economic growth.”

STOCKHOLM — Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt won the Nobel memorial prize in economics Monday for “having explained innovation-driven economic growth.”

Mokyr is from Northwestern University, Aghion from the College de France and the London School of Economics, and Howitt from Brown University.

The Nobel committee said Mokyr “demonstrated that if innovations are to succeed one another in a self-generating process, we not only need to know that something works, but we also need to have scientific explanations for why.”

Aghion and Howitt also studied the mechanisms behind sustained growth, including in a 1992 article in which they constructed a mathematical model for what is called creative destruction: When a new and better product enters the market, the companies selling the older products lose out.

“The laureates’ work shows that economic growth cannot be taken for granted. We must uphold the mechanisms that underly creative destruction, so that we do not fall back into stagnation,” said Hassler, Chair of the Committee for the prize in economic sciences.