Key points
- Award recognises their work on innovation-driven economic growth
- Prize worth 11 million Swedish crowns
- Royal Swedish Academy says their research highlights risks to sustained growth
STOCKHOLM: Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt have been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics for their research on “having explained innovation-driven economic growth,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Monday.
The prestigious accolade — officially known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel — is the final Nobel prize to be presented this year and carries a value of 11 million Swedish crowns (£1 million / $1.2 million).
“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,” the Academy said in a statement, reports Reuters.
Persistent poverty
The awards for medicine, physics, chemistry, peace, and literature were revealed last week. These prizes were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite and businessman, and have been awarded since 1901, with only a few interruptions during the world wars.
The economics prize, however, was introduced much later — first presented in 1969, when it was shared by Ragnar Frisch of Norway and Jan Tinbergen of the Netherlands for their pioneering work in dynamic economic modelling. Tinbergen’s brother, Nikolaas Tinbergen, later won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1973.
Although few economists are widely known outside academic circles, some previous laureates have achieved broader recognition, including Ben Bernanke, Paul Krugman, and Milton Friedman.
The 2024 Economics Nobel went to Simon Johnson, James Robinson, and Daron Acemoglu, US-based scholars recognised for their research into how colonisation and the development of public institutions have shaped long-term economic inequality and persistent poverty in certain nations.
