The award went to three researchers from the United States, Canada and France for explaining how technological progress leads to prosperity.
“The laureates have taught us that sustained growth cannot be taken for granted,” the prize-awarding body said in a statement. “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.”
The Nobel committee said Mokyr had “demonstrated that if innovations are to succeed one another in a self-generating process, we not only need to know that something works, but we also need to have scientific explanations for why.”
The winners, especially Aghion and Howitt, were credited with better explaining and quantifying “creative destruction,” a key concept in economics that refers to the process in which beneficial new innovations replace — and thus destroy — older technologies and businesses. The concept was outlined by economist Joseph Schumpeter in his 1942 book “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.”