2025 Nobel Economics Prize Awarded to Mokyr, Aghion and Howitt for Innovation-Driven Growth Research

Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt (L-R) have been awarded the 2025 Nobel economics prize for "having explained innovation-driven economic growth," as announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Monday.

The prestigious award, officially known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, represents the final Nobel prize announcement of this year and carries a monetary value of 11 million Swedish crowns (approximately $1.2 million).

In their statement, the prize committee emphasized the significance of the laureates' research: "The laureates have taught us that sustained 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 counteract, threats to continued growth."

This economics award follows last week's announcements of the Nobel prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry, peace, and literature.

While the traditional Nobel prizes were established through Alfred Nobel's will and have been awarded since 1901 (with occasional interruptions during world wars), the economics prize has a more recent history. It was first awarded in 1969 to Norway's Ragnar Frisch and the Netherlands' Jan Tinbergen for their contributions to dynamic economic modeling. Interestingly, Jan Tinbergen's brother Nikolaas later won the Medicine prize in 1973.

Although economists rarely achieve widespread public recognition, some notable previous recipients include former US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, Paul Krugman, and Milton Friedman.

The 2024 economics prize was awarded to US-based academics Simon Johnson, James Robinson, and Daron Acemoglu, whose research investigated the relationship between colonization and institutional development to explain persistent poverty in certain countries.