Economists from the United States, Canada, and France were awarded this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt won the prize for \u201cexplaining innovation-driven economic growth,\u201d according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The Nobel Prize was awarded at a ceremony in Stockholm after prizes for peace, medicine, physics, chemistry, and literature were announced last week.<\/p>\n
The work of Mokyr, Aghion, and Howitt has changed the way economists, policymakers, and researchers approach the mechanisms behind technological progress and prosperity. The award winners have taught us that sustainable growth cannot be taken for granted. "Economic stagnation, not growth, has been the norm for most of human history. Their work shows that we must be aware of and address threats to further growth."<\/p>\n
Mokyr "proved that if innovations are to follow one another in a self-generating process, we not only need to know that something works, but we also need scientific explanations for why." The winners, particularly Aghion and Howitt, were credited with better explaining and quantifying \u201ccreative destruction,\u201d a key concept in economics that refers to the process by which useful new innovations replace, and thus destroy, older technologies and businesses.<\/p>\n
Reacting to the news, Aghion said he was shocked. \u201cI don\u2019t have the words to express my feelings,\u201d he said by telephone at the press conference in Stockholm. He said he would invest his prize money in his research laboratory. Dutch-born US citizen Mokyr, 79, is a professor of economics and history at Northwestern University in the United States, French-born Aghion, 69, is a Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and the College of France, while Canadian Howitt, 79, is a professor of social sciences at Brown University.<\/p>\n
The economics prize is officially known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The central bank built it in 1968 as a monument to the 19th-century Swedish industrialist who invented dynamite and later launched the five Nobel Prizes. Since then, the prize has been awarded 57 times to a total of 99 winners. Although not technically a Nobel Prize, the Economics Prize is always awarded along with the others at a ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.<\/p>\n
Last year’s prize went to US-based trio Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson for their research into how freer, more open societies are more likely to lead to economic prosperity. The prize has been criticized for the high number of Western male winners, with only three of the previous winners being women. Well-known winners include former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Paul Krugman, and Milton Friedman.<\/p>\n
The other Nobel Prize winners this year were: Medicine \u2013 for \u201cDiscoveries in Peripheral Immune Tolerance\u201d; Physics \u2013 for their work in the field of quantum mechanical tunneling; Chemistry \u2013 for the development of a new organometallic framework; Literature \u2013 for \u201chis captivating and visionary work\u201d in the midst of apocalyptic terror that \u201caffirms the power of art\u201d; Peace \u2013 for \u201cher tireless work to promote the democratic rights of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Introduction to the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences Economists from the United States, Canada, and France were awarded this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt won the prize for \u201cexplaining innovation-driven economic growth,\u201d according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The Nobel Prize was awarded<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[14681,14685,14680,2420,516,2597,14678,14674,14682,3197,14675,2297,93,14673,1796,1429,1352,14671,13352,877,14684,14667,14677,14687,14666,9373,13364,13806,14688,13349,14676,14690,14686,14669,14668,8979,14689,14670,14683,14679,13366,14672,304],"class_list":{"0":"post-25302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-alfred-nobel","9":"tag-ben-bernanke","10":"tag-brown-university","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-central-bank","13":"tag-chemistry","14":"tag-college-de-france","15":"tag-creative-destruction","16":"tag-daron-acemoglu","17":"tag-democracy","18":"tag-dutch-people","19":"tag-dynamite","20":"tag-economic-growth","21":"tag-economic-stagnation","22":"tag-economics","23":"tag-federal-reserve","24":"tag-france","25":"tag-history-of-technology","26":"tag-immune-tolerance","27":"tag-innovation","28":"tag-james-a-robinson","29":"tag-joel-mokyr","30":"tag-london-school-of-economics","31":"tag-milton-friedman","32":"tag-nobel-memorial-prize-in-economic-sciences","33":"tag-nobel-peace-prize","34":"tag-nobel-prize","35":"tag-nobel-prize-in-literature","36":"tag-nobel-prize-in-physics","37":"tag-nobel-prize-in-physiology-or-medicine","38":"tag-northwestern-university","39":"tag-organometallic-chemistry","40":"tag-paul-krugman","41":"tag-peter-howitt-economist","42":"tag-philippe-aghion","43":"tag-physics","44":"tag-quantum-tunnelling","45":"tag-royal-swedish-academy-of-sciences","46":"tag-simon-johnson-economist","47":"tag-social-science","48":"tag-stockholm","49":"tag-sustainable-development","50":"tag-united-states"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25304,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25302\/revisions\/25304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}