Economics and history Prof. Joel Mokyr was announced as one of three winners of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Monday.

Mokyr won half of The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2025 for his work demonstrating how technological processes have led to sustained economic growth, identifying three prerequisites for growth: useful knowledge, mechanical competence and institutions conducive to technological growth.

The other half of the award is shared between Philippe Aghion of Collège de France and the London School of Economics and Peter Howitt (Weinberg Doctorate ’73) of Brown University for their work creating a mathematical model for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction.

Mokyr specializes in the economic history of Europe, particularly between 1750-1914. His work centers on understanding the growth of useful knowledge in European societies, the intellectual and economic starts of technological progress and the impacts of industrialization and economic progress on economic welfare. 

In 2015, Mokyr was awarded the prestigious International Balzan Prize for his work on the start of technological change and the economic history of Europe. He is one of only three Americans to be awarded the prize and won 750,000 Swiss francs. 

Mokyr was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association in 2018, which recognizes lifetime research contributions of four economists annually. He also received the 2018 Elinor Ostrom Prize for his paper titled “Cognitive rules, institutions and economic growth: Douglass North and beyond,” which was co-written with Stanford Prof. Avner Greif. 

In 2006, he received the biennial Heineken Award for History from the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences.

According to a University news release, this is the first Nobel Prize awarded to a Northwestern faculty member since 2016 when Sir Fraser Stoddart won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. 

Economics Prof. Dale Mortensen received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2010, and chemistry Prof. John Pople won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1998. 

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