Wikimedia Commons

Joel Mokyr GRD ’72 ’74, who received a master’s degree and a doctorate in economics from Yale, received the Nobel Prize in Economics on Monday.

According to the Nobel Prize press release, Mokyr, a professor at Northwestern University, received a half of the prize “for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress.” The other half of the prize was awarded jointly to the French economist Philippe Aghion and Brown University professor Peter Howitt for their theory of “sustained growth through creative destruction.”

“Joel Mokyr’s emphasis on the importance of Europe’s shared intellectual heritage led economic historians to pay attention to the previously less-studied role of culture in promoting economic growth,” Robert Dimand GRD ’79 ’80 ’83, a visiting professor from Brock University who teaches “History of Economic Thought” at Yale, wrote in an email to the News.

Mokyr’s work examines the relationship between innovative ideas and sustained economic growth, Dimand wrote. Mokyr has argued that cultural and institutional factors in premodern Western Europe, like political fragmentation and intellectual exchange, enabled the region’s scientific innovations and rise in living standards, according to Dimand.

At Yale, Mokyr served as an acting instructor between 1972 and 1973.

Karen Peart, Yale’s associate vice president for communications, wrote in a statement to the News that Yale congratulates Mokyr, and that his award will be celebrated in a Yale Today issue after “allowing the winner’s current institution time to celebrate him.” Mokyr has taught at Northwestern since 1974.

Mokyr was born in 1946 to Dutch Jews who had survived the Holocaust and lost his father to cancer when he was just one year old. His mother raised him in Haifa, Israel, the Wall Street Journal reported.

José-Antonio Espín-Sánchez, an economics professor who teaches “General Economic History: Western Europe” at Yale and whose thesis Mokyr advised at Northwestern, described Mokyr as the “greatest economic historian alive.”

“He is the world expert on the industrial revolution and technological growth,” Espín-Sánchez wrote in an email to the News. “If you ask me, even as his scholarly contributions are Nobel worthy, I still think his main contribution to the world is the dozens of students, like me, that he has inspired and mentored to do research, to understand the world we lived in, and to do good to others.”

Espín-Sánchez added that Mokyr always challenged his advisees to expand the way they think about economic history. Many students who had come to Northwestern to pursue other fields, including himself, ended up becoming economic historians due to Mokyr’s passion, Espín-Sánchez wrote.

“I know I would not be where I am now, nor would I be an economic historian if it was not for Joel, and I think many people could say the same,” he added.

According to a 1993 article in the News, Yale attempted to recruit Mokyr from Northwestern that year to replace William Parker, a professor of economic history who had retired four years earlier.

“For me, going to Yale would be like going home,” Mokyr told the News at the time.

Mokyr, however, ultimately turned down the offer. According to a 1995 News article, he declined because the University could not find a job for his spouse, Margalit Birnbaum Mokyr, who was then a professor at the University of Illinois.

“Indeed, this was the only reason,” Mokyr told the News then. “Yale could not offer her anything comparable to what she has now. Since there was nothing comparable in the immediate area either, we had no choice.”

Espín-Sánchez noted that Mokyr’s honor marks the fourth consecutive year in which the Nobel Prize in Economics has recognized the field of economic history.

“We seem to be living in an important historical inflection point, and the Nobel committee wants to look at history to put current events in perspective,” Espín-Sánchez wrote.

Dimand wrote that the sharing of the prize between Mokyr, an economic historian, and Aghion and Howitt, who formalized Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction, “recognizes that both historical perspective and theoretical modeling are needed to understand the extraordinary changes in first the European economy and then the world economy in recent centuries.”

At least 13 Yale affiliates had received the Nobel Prize for Economics in the 21st century before Mokyr, according to Yale’s Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics. Most recently, economics professors Robert Shiller and William Nordhaus ’63 received the prize in 2013 and 2018, respectively.

According to Dimand, Mokyr’s recognition, along with Nordhaus’ and Shiller’s, exemplifies the “excellence and influence” of Yale’s economics department.

Yale professor emeritus Michel Devoret and María Corina Machado, a 2009 Yale Jackson School World Fellow, also received Nobel Prizes this month. Devoret received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in quantum physics, and Machado received the Nobel Peace Prize for advocating for democracy in Venezuela.

The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901.