Originally published in FUSION
The 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded for explaining innovation-driven economic growth. Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt were pioneers in endogenous growth theory and many would assume that they missed their moment when Paul Romer won in 2018. Now their seminal contributions in growth theory have been paired with Joel Mokyr’s insights into the historical process of economic growth and innovation. It is Mokyr’s work that I want to focus on here.
Mokyr’s earliest work (including a formal model published in Explorations in Economic History in 1976) was focused on issues of economic growth. But until he wrote The Lever of Riches in 1990, Mokyr was best-known for his work on the Irish famine of the mid-19th century. The Lever of Riches, however, was a blockbuster. It is a testament to the book’s impact and longevity that it is still on many undergraduate reading lists today (including my own).
