What is growth, what drives it, and what role does innovation play? How is the conflict between creation and destruction resolved? On Monday, October 13, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, commonly known as the Nobel Prize in Economics, was awarded to three researchers who delved deeply into these central questions for its 2025 edition.
The first is Joel Mokyr, a 79-year-old Israeli-American economic historian. A specialist in the Industrial Revolution and the innovations that fueled it, Mokyr has argued that growth results not only from economic or political factors but also from cultural and institutional changes. Mokyr has highlighted the emergence of a culture of growth, which is characterized by a belief in progress and an understanding of knowledge as a cumulative phenomenon: Science feeds technology, which in turn drives science.
He also analyzed the factors that have held back technology. He is optimistic about humanity’s creative capacity but distances himself from the theories of his Northwestern University colleague, Robert Gordon, who views the strong growth between 1870 and 1970 as an anomaly in human history.
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