✍️ Editor’s Note
Announced today as co-recipients of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics, Joel Mokyr and Philippe Aghion have spent their careers exploring how innovation reshapes economies and societies. Their work, written nearly a decade apart, tells one continuous story about the power of technology to transform our future.
Mokyr’s 2016 essay challenged the prevailing gloom about slowing innovation and argued that scientific discovery and technological change reinforce each other in a powerful cycle of progress. Aghion’s new analysis, published this year, shows that this prediction was correct. Artificial intelligence, far from destroying jobs or slowing growth, is already boosting productivity and expanding employment when supported by smart policies.
Read together, these two essays trace the arc from vision to reality. They remind us that the technological frontier is still expanding and that societies bold enough to embrace change will shape the future of prosperity.
Part I – The Vision
Is Our Economic Future Behind Us?
By Joel Mokyr, Project Syndicate | Nov 29, 2016
With the global economy yet to recover from the 2008 economic crisis, concern about the future – especially of the advanced economies – is intensifying. But, with scientific progress surging forward, there is plenty of reason to believe that technological advances will continue to surpass our wildest dreams – and drive growth.
