Joel Mokyr
Facts
Ill. Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach
Joel Mokyr
Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025
Born: 26 July 1946, Leiden, the Netherlands
Affiliation at the time of the award: Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA; Eitan Berglas School of Economics, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
Prize motivation: “for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress”
Prize share: 1/2
Work
Over the last two centuries, the world has seen sustained economic growth. However, this was not always the case. In fact it was quite the opposite – in the past there was often stagnation. In the 1990s Joel Mokyr used historical sources as one means to uncover the causes of this sustained growth. He demonstrated that if innovations are to succeed one another in a self-generating process, scientific explanations for why innovations work are needed. Mokyr also emphasised the importance of society being open to new ideas and allowing change.
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