Three economists win Nobel Prize for sustained growth research

Three economists were awarded the 2025 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel on Monday for research explaining how innovation sustains long‑run economic growth. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University will receive one half of the prize for identifying prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress, while Philippe Aghion of Collège de France, INSEAD and the London School of Economics and Political Science and Peter Howitt of Brown University will share the other half for developing the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction.

The prize, the final award of this year’s Nobel season, carries a sum of 11 million Swedish kronor. The academy said the laureates’ work demonstrates that sustained growth is not automatic and that societies must preserve the institutional and economic conditions that allow innovation to emerge and spread. John Hassler of the Nobel Committee said the laureates have shown that "sustained growth cannot be taken for granted."

Mokyr, an economic historian, used long‑run historical evidence to explain why growth became persistent after the Industrial...