The 2025 Economic Nobel Prize focuses on how innovation promotes economic growth, and the winner criticizes Trump tariffs on the spot

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Monday that Joel Mokier, Philip Agion and Peter Hauit have won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics for their research on how innovation and the forces of "creative destruction" drive sustained economic growth.
Mokiel, 79, is currently a professor at Northwestern University in the United States. He will enjoy half of the 11 million Swedish kronor prize money. Aguion, 69, holds teaching positions at the École de France in Paris, the European School of Business Administration and the London School of Economics in the United Kingdom. 79-year-old Howitt works at Brown University in the United States.
The Nobel Prize official wrote in the award speech: "The 2025 Economics Prize winners have revealed to us that sustained economic growth is not taken for granted. In the long history of mankind, economic stagnation rather than growth has been the norm. Their research shows that we must be vigilant and resist the factors that threaten continued growth... If we fail to address these threats, the mechanisms of 'creative destruction' that have brought us continued growth may cease-and we will have to readjust to economic stagnation."
Economic historian Mokier won the award for his research on how innovation in the Industrial Revolution and subsequent periods promoted sustained economic growth, giving the Nobel Prize in Economics a significant element of economic history for the fourth consecutive year.
Mokiir pointed out that to promote continuous economic growth, a continuous flow of "useful knowledge" is a necessary condition. If innovation is to continue to occur in a self-generating way, people must not only know that "something works," but also understand "why it works." This is also why new discoveries made before the Industrial Revolution are difficult to be further developed.
Focusing on the impact of technological change, Mokier pointed out that achieving sustained growth requires meeting three prerequisites: first, the co-evolution of science and technology-people must understand why things work; second, the popularization and improvement of mechanical skills; third, society must remain open to potential disruptive changes.
In a subsequent paper published in 1992, Agion and Hoyt built a mathematical model for so-called "creative destruction": When newer and better products enter the market, companies selling old products suffer losses. This kind of innovation represents the birth of new things and is therefore creative. But it is also disruptive, because companies with outdated technology will be eliminated from the market.
This model has direct guiding significance for economic policy formulation and can be used to calibrate R & D subsidy policies and optimize the social protection system for unemployed workers in technological change.
Agion and Hoyt also co-authored the book "Endogenous Growth Theory."
Regarding the significance of these award-winning studies, Dr. Liu Hongjie, digital economics research consultant at the Institute of People-centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) at Stanford University, commented: "The research of these award-winning recipients reveals that innovation has become an endogenous force for growth-economic growth is no longer regarded as an exogenous miracle, but a systematic result of institutions, competition and knowledge accumulation. At the same time, the system determines the innovation ecosystem, and competition, education, scientific research investment and property rights protection jointly shape innovation sustainability. From the industrial revolution to the AI era, the key to technological change lies in 'letting innovation reproduce itself.'"
As the only European-based scholar among the three winners, Agion was also asked about the threat to economic growth of U.S. tariff policies at a press conference on Monday.
He bluntly said that "he does not like the wave of protectionism in the United States, which is not conducive to world economicgrowth and innovation." He also emphasized at the press conference that "openness is the driving force for growth. Any factor that impedes openness will become a stumbling block to growth. So I see the dark clouds that are currently accumulating, pushing trade barriers and closure policies.”
He also emphasized the need to strike a balance between economic growth and environmental protection and promote competition in the field of artificial intelligence. He warned that without prudent regulation,"superstar" companies could monopolize the field and hinder the entry of future competitors.
This article is reproduced from "Financial Union", author: Shi Zhengcheng; editor of Zhitong Finance and Economics: Feng Qiuyi.