Israeli-American among three awarded Nobel prize in economics

Born in the Netherlands and raised in Haifa, Joel Mokyr is a world-renowned economic historian, known for his research on the history of technological innovation and sustained growth

Israeli-American economist Joel Mokyr was named Monday as one of a trio of researchers awarded the Nobel prize in economics for “having explained innovation-driven economic growth.”

Mokyr, 79, a professor from Northwestern University, won alongside Philippe Aghion from the College de France and the London School of Economics, and Peter Howitt from Brown University.

Born in Leiden in the Netherlands to a Dutch-Jewish family that survived the Holocaust, Mokyr was raised in Haifa. He earned his undergraduate degree in economics and history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem before moving to the US to continue his academic pursuits and graduating with a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University.

Mokyr’s academic studies and research specialize in the economic history of Europe, the understanding of the economic and intellectual roots of technological progress, and population change.

The Nobel committee awarded Mokyr “for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress.”

The committee said Mokyr “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.”

Mokyr is the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and professor of economics and history at Northwestern University, and serves as a visiting professor at the Hebrew University. Since 2001, he has also been a Sackler research fellow at the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at Tel Aviv University.

Prof. Amal Jamal, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Tel Aviv University congratulated Mokyr on winning the Nobel award.

“Mokyr regularly teaches as a guest lecturer at the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at Tel Aviv University, and the award is a great honor for us,” said Prof. Jamal. “This is further evidence of the prestige of Israeli research in the world and the high status of the School of Economics.”

Aghion and Howitt also studied the mechanisms behind sustained growth, including in a 1992 article in which they constructed a mathematical model for what is called creative destruction: When a new and better product enters the market, the companies selling the older products lose out.

“The laureates’ work shows that economic growth cannot be taken for granted. We must uphold the mechanisms that underlie creative destruction, so that we do not fall back into stagnation,” said John Hassler, the chair of the committee for the prize in economic sciences.