Nobel economics prize goes to 3 researchers for explaining
innovation-driven economic growth
[October 13, 2025] By
KOSTYA MANENKOV and MIKE CORDER
STOCKHOLM (AP) — 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.
Aghion said he was shocked by the honor. “I can’t find the words to
express what I feel," he said by phone to the press conference in
Stockholm. He said he would invest his prize money in his research
laboratory.
Asked about the current situation in the world, Aghion said that: “I am
not welcoming the protectionist way in the US. That is not good for ...
world growth and innovation.”
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.”
The winners were credited with better explaining and quantifying
“creative destruction,” a key concept in economics that refers to the
process in which beneficial new innovations replace — and thus destroy —
older technologies and businesses. The concept is usually associated
with economist Joseph Schumpeter, who outlined it in his 1942 book
“Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.”
Aghion and Howitt studied the mechanisms behind sustained growth,
including in a 1992 article in which they constructed a mathematical
model for creative destruction.
“The laureates’ work shows that economic growth cannot be taken for
granted. We must uphold the mechanisms that underlie creative
destruction, so that we do not fall back into stagnation,” said John
Hassler, Chair of the committee for the prize in economic sciences.
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Professor John Hassler, from left, Hans Ellegren, Permanent
Secretary of the Academy of Sciences and Professor Kerstin Enflo,
announce Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt as the
recipients the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics during a press
conference at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm,
Sweden, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. (Anders Wiklund/TT News Agency via
AP)
 One half of the 11 million Swedish
kronor (nearly $1.2 million) prize went to Mokyr and the other half
was shared by Aghion and Howitt. Winners also receive an 18-carat
gold medal and a diploma.
The economics prize is formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in
Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The central bank
established it in 1968 as a memorial to Nobel, the 19th-century
Swedish businessman and chemist who invented dynamite and
established the five Nobel Prizes.
Since then, it has been awarded 56 times to a total of 96 laureates.
Only three of the winners have been women.
Nobel purists stress that the economics prize is technically not a
Nobel Prize, but it is always presented together with the others on
Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.
Last year’s award went to three economists — Daron Acemoglu, Simon
Johnson and James A. Robinson — who studied why some countries are
rich and others poor and have documented that freer, open societies
are more likely to prosper.
Nobel honors were announced last week in medicine, physics,
chemistry, literature and peace.
___
Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands. David McHugh in
Frankfurt, Germany, contributed to this report
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