Stockholm: The 2025 Nobel Prize in economics has been awarded to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt for their groundbreaking research on how technological innovation drives long-term economic growth.
Announcing the award on Monday, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the laureates were recognised for having explained innovation-driven economic growth. Their collective work shows how the world’s unprecedented economic expansion over the past two centuries, which lifted millions out of poverty, has been powered by continuous technological progress.
Joel Mokyr, a professor at Northwestern University in the United States, will receive half of the 11 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million) prize. His historical research focused on the Industrial Revolution, identifying the critical shift from mere observation of inventions to understanding how and why technologies work.
BREAKING NEWS
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2025 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth” with one half to Mokyr… pic.twitter.com/ZRKq0Nz4g7— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 13, 2025
The other half of the prize will be shared by Philippe Aghion of the Collège de France and the London School of Economics, and Peter Howitt of Brown University in the United States. The two were recognised for developing a formal theory of “creative destruction,” first popularised by Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter.
In their 1992 paper, Aghion and Howitt presented a mathematical framework showing how innovation replaces outdated technologies and products, driving both productivity and disruption within economies. Their model became central to understanding the balance between progress and instability in modern growth.
This year’s economics award concludes the 2025 Nobel season, which also honoured achievements in immunology, quantum mechanics, and molecular architecture.
The economics prize, formally known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was established in 1968 by Sweden’s central bank and is not part of Alfred Nobel’s original will. Despite its separate origins, it has come to be regarded as one of the world’s most prestigious academic honours.
