This year's Nobel Prize in economics went to three economists who identified the mechanisms of sustainable growth.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' Nobel Committee said on the 13th (local time) that Joel Mokyr, a professor at Northwestern University in the United States, Peter Howitt, a professor at Brown University in the United States, and Philippe Aghion, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom, were selected as the winners of the 2025 Nobel Prize in economics.
Mokyr is from the Netherlands and is a professor at Northwestern University in the United States. Aghion was born in France and is currently a professor at Collège de France and INSEAD in France, and at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Howitt was born in Canada and is currently a professor at Brown University in the United States.
The Nobel Committee said of Professor Mokyr that he "showed how new technologies can drive sustained growth." It also said of the other two, including Aghion, that they "studied how creative destruction creates conflict in different ways and showed that such conflict must be managed in a constructive way."
The committee said, "For most of human history, stagnation was the normal state," adding, "Professor Mokyr showed that for innovation to occur continuously in a self-generating process, it is not enough to know that something works; a scientific explanation of why it works is also necessary."
Regarding Professor Aghion and Professor Howitt, it said they "studied the mechanisms of sustained growth," crediting their 1992 paper for presenting the concept known as creative destruction in a mathematical model.
The committee explained, "Innovation is creative in that it creates something new, but it is also destructive because corporations whose technologies fall behind are pushed out of competition," adding, "The laureates showed in different ways how creative destruction creates conflict and that such conflict must be managed in a constructive way."
John Hassler, Chairperson of the Nobel Prize in economics selection committee, said, "The laureates' research shows that economic growth is not a given," adding, "We must maintain the mechanisms that underpin creative destruction; otherwise, we could return to stagnation."
Meanwhile, the Nobel Prize award ceremony is held on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death. The prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and economics are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, and the peace prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway. The winners receive a medal and a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (about 1.65 billion won). Half, 5.5 million Swedish kronor, goes to Mokyr alone, and the remaining half is shared by Aghion and Howitt, who receive the economics prize for their joint research, at 275 Swedish kronor each.