Book Joel Mokyr

Joel Mokyr, an economic historian with American and Israeli citizenship, is a 2025 laureate of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, sharing the award for identifying what it takes for technological progress to drive lasting economic growth. He holds Northwestern University's Robert H. Strotz chair in the arts and sciences, teaching there since 1974, and a senior adjunct professor at Tel Aviv University's Eitan Berglas School of Economics. His 2016 book A Culture of Growth traces the intellectual roots of the Industrial Revolution and the modern economy, and drew strong praise from fellow economists. Mokyr has edited the Princeton Economic History of the Western World series and the five-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, co-edited the Journal of Economic History, and served a 2002–2003 term as president of the Economic History Association. Other honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship (1980), the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for History (2006), the Balzan Prize (2015), and fellowships of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. As a speaker he explains, with wit and long historical perspective, why innovation flourishes in some societies and stalls in others.