Canadian economist Peter Howitt is part of a group of three researchers who have won the Nobel Prize in economics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Monday.
Howitt, Joel Mokyr and Philippe Aghion were recognized for their research into the impact of innovation on economic growth and how new technologies replace old ones – a key economic concept known as “creative destruction”.
The winners represent contrasting but complementary approaches to economics. Mokyr is an economic historian who looked at long-term trends using historical sources, while Howitt and Aghion relied on mathematics to explain how creative destruction works.
Howitt, 79, received his bachelor’s degree in economics from McGill University in Montreal and his master’s degree from Western University in London, Ontario. He is a professor of social sciences at Brown University in Providence, RI.
Aghion, 69, is a graduate of the Collège de France and the London School of Economics. Mokyr, 79, of Dutch origin, graduated from Northwestern University.
Mokyr was still trying to get his morning coffee when he was contacted by phone by an Associated Press reporter and said he was shocked to win the prize.
“People always say that, but in this case I’m telling the truth: I had no idea something like this was going to happen,” he said.
His students had asked him about the possibility of him winning the Nobel, he said. “I told them I had a better chance of being elected pope than winning the Nobel Prize in economics – and besides, I’m Jewish.”
Mokyr turns 80 next summer but said he has no plans to retire. “This is the kind of job I’ve dreamed of my whole life,” he said.
Aghion also said he was shocked by the honor. “I can’t find the words to express what I feel,” he said by telephone during the press conference in Stockholm. He said he would invest his prize money in his research laboratory.
Asked about the current trade wars and protectionism around the world, Aghion said: “I do not welcome the protectionist policy of the United States. It is not good for global growth and innovation.”
“Creative destruction”
Winners were recognized for better explaining and quantifying “creative destruction,” a key concept in economics that refers to the process by which new, beneficial innovations replace – and thus destroy – older technologies and businesses.
The concept is generally associated with economist Joseph Schumpeter, who described it in his 1942 book. Capitalism, socialism and democracy.
The Nobel committee said Mokyr “demonstrated that if innovations are to follow one another in a self-generated process, we must not only know that something works, but we must also have scientific explanations for why.”
Aghion and Howitt have studied the mechanisms behind sustained growth, notably in a 1992 paper in which they constructed a mathematical model of creative destruction.
Aghion helped shape French President Emmanuel Macron’s economic agenda during his 2017 election campaign. Most recently, Aghion co-chaired the National Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which submitted a report to Macron in 2024 containing 25 recommendations to position France as a leading force in the field of AI.
“The work of the winners shows that economic growth cannot be taken for granted. We must preserve the mechanisms that underlie creative destruction, so as not to fall back into stagnation,” said John Hassler, chair of the Economics Prize Committee.
Half of the 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.6 million Canadian) prize goes to Mokyr and the other half is shared by Aghion and Howitt. Winners also receive an 18-karat gold medal and a diploma.
The economics prize is officially known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The central bank established it in 1968 in memory of Nobel, the 19th-century Swedish businessman and chemist who invented dynamite and created the five Nobel Prizes.
Since then, it has been awarded 57 times, for a total of 99 winners. Only three of the winners were women.
Nobel purists point out that the economics prize is not technically a Nobel Prize, but is still awarded with the others on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.
Nobel Prizes were announced last week in the fields of medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace.
