Northwestern hosts press conference at 3 p.m. with Nobel Laureate Joel Mokyr

EVANSTON, Ill. – Joel Mokyr, the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and professor of economics and history in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University, today (Oct. 13) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

A live press conference with Mokyr will be held today at 3 p.m. CT at Cahn Auditorium, 600 Emerson St., on Northwestern’s Evanston campus. Media should RSVP to stephanie.kulke@northwestern.edu or 847-491-4819.

The press conference will be livestreamed at https://www.northwestern.edu/academics/nobel-prize.html. Reporters watching the livestream can send their questions in advance to media@northwestern.edu. We will field as many as possible during the event.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2025 to three economists for showing how technological progress has led to sustained economic growth. Mokyr receives half of the prize for his development of a theory for sustained economic growth. Mokyr identified three important requisites for growth: useful knowledge, mechanical competence and institutions conducive to technological progress.  

The other half of the prize is shared by Philippe Aghion of the Collège de France and the London School of Economics and Peter Howitt of Brown University for their creation of a mathematical model for a theory of sustained growth through creative destruction. Howitt earned his doctorate in economics from Northwestern in 1973.

Mokyr (pronounced mo-KEER) is an expert on the economic history of Europe, specializing in the period 1750-1914. He is concerned with understanding the economic and intellectual roots of technological progress and the growth of useful knowledge in European societies. His research also focuses on the impact that industrialization and economic progress have had on economic welfare.

In 2016, the late Sir Fraser Stoddart, the Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2010, the late Dale T. Mortensen, the Ida C. Cook Professor of Economics at Northwestern, won the Nobel Prize in Economics; and in 1998, the late John A. Pople, who was Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern, received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Read the full story on Northwestern Now.