Overview

• The prize splits one half to economic historian Joel Mokyr and the other half jointly to economists Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt for work explaining how long-term growth emerges from continual innovation that replaces outdated technologies.
• Mokyr’s research documents how scientific understanding, open societies and the spread of knowledge enabled the Industrial Revolution and converted episodic inventions into sustained progress.
• Aghion–Howitt’s 1992 model formalized growth through creative destruction, where new technologies displace incumbents yet yield stable aggregate expansion through constant innovation.
• The Nobel committee highlighted examples such as the telephone’s evolution to convey the idea, with coverage tracing the concept to Joseph Schumpeter’s 1940s articulation and noting earlier intellectual roots in Marx’s writings.
• Current reporting frames artificial intelligence as a fast-moving instance of this mechanism, underscoring calls for training, social insurance and pro-innovation rules to ease worker transitions and share the gains.