Ones and Tooze Nobel Prize for Economics
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Oct 24, 2025 This discussion dives into the Nobel Prize in Economics, celebrating the groundbreaking work of Mokyr, Aghion, and Howitt. The focus is on innovation and creative destruction as key drivers of economic growth. Topics include Mokyr's view on Britain's role during the Industrial Revolution and how Aghion's modern take on Schumpeterian models influences competition and innovation. There's also a critical look at Europe's innovation gap and thoughts on climate policy, highlighting the interplay between technology and economic strategies.
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Economic History's Return To The Fold
- Economic history has regained prominence through quantitative, theory-informed work linking history to growth economics.
- The Nobel committee's choice signals a rapprochement between historical narrative and mainstream growth theory.
Knowledge Entanglement Drove Britain’s Breakthrough
- Joel Mokyr emphasizes that the Industrial Revolution became self-sustaining by entangling propositional and prescriptive knowledge.
- He argues Britain uniquely linked theoretical science and craft, enabling cumulative, scalable innovation.
Historical Lessons Are Limited By Scale
- Mokyr concedes 18th-century lessons poorly map onto the radically faster, larger-scale dynamics of the 21st century.
- Historical mechanisms can be true in kind but differ hugely in degree from modern technological change.