The 2025 Nobel Prize Winners in Economics!
Copenhagen, Oct 13 (EFE).-
Joel Mokyr of the United States, the French Philippe Aghion and the Canada’s Peter Howitt were awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics on Monday, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Monday
“This year’s laureates in economic sciences, Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt, explain how innovation provides the impetus for further progress,” the Academy said in a statement.
One half of the prize money of 11 million Swedish krona (over $1.15 million) was awarded to Mokyr, a professor at the Northwestern University in Illinois, US, for “having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress.”
The other half was shared between Aghion, of the Collège de France in Paris, and Howitt, professor at Brown University, US, for “the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction.”
According to the Academy, Mokyr used historical sources to reveal why sustained economic growth has become the new norm in recent centuries, compared to the stagnation of previous periods.
“He 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 statement said.
“The latter was often lacking prior to the industrial revolution, which made it difficult to build upon new discoveries and inventions. He also emphasised the importance of society being open to new ideas and allowing change,” it added.
Moreover, he underlined the importance of society being open to change and new ideas.
On the other hand, Aghion and Howitt, in a 1992 article, constructed a mathematical model of the so-called creative destruction, which refers to the phenomenon that when a new and better product enters the market, the companies that sell the old product suffer losses.
The two laureates showed in different ways that this creative destruction causes conflicts that must be managed constructively, otherwise established companies and interest groups will block innovations so as not to be harmed.
“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. EFE
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