The case for a Nobel to Joel Mokyr
Here is GPT-5 making the case. Excerpt:
A micro‑foundation for growth: “useful knowledge,” its two forms, and the Industrial Enlightenment
Mokyr’s signature contribution is to put knowledge—not just capital, labor, or “institutions” in the abstract—at the center of modern growth. In The Gifts of Athena and subsequent papers and lectures, he distinguishes between:
Propositional knowledge (“knowledge what” about natural regularities), and
Prescriptive knowledge (“knowledge how” about techniques and production).
He argues that sustained growth arises when a society builds positive feedback between the two: deeper scientific understanding makes techniques improvable, while new techniques generate puzzles that push science forward. This is the Industrial Enlightenment: a culture that expects progress, rewards it, and knits together savants and artisans in a “Republic of Letters,” a kind of 18th‑century knowledge commons with rules for open exchange, replication, and credit…
In The Enlightened Economy and A Culture of Growth, Mokyr shows that the British/European break‑out ca. 1700–1850 was propelled less by isolated “heroic” inventions or factor prices alone and more by a cultural–epistemic shift: an elite market for ideas in a politically fragmented Europe created exit options for heterodox thinkers and incentives for rulers to compete for talent. This account complements rather than denies other forces (coal, wages, property rights), but it explains persistence—why growth became self‑sustaining.
…Joel Mokyr changed how economists explain the onset and persistence of modern growth. He supplied a historically grounded, analytically sharp account of how societies produce, organize, and circulate knowledge so that it becomes self‑amplifying. That account has not only reshaped economic history; it has supplied live ammunition for growth theory and for policy in a world where intangible, recombinable knowledge is the main engine of prosperity. The 2025 Nobel Committee’s decision to honor him alongside Aghion and Howitt simply makes explicit what many researchers have long recognized: innovations power growth, and Mokyr showed us how societies build the machinery that powers innovations.
Here is Mokyr in scholar.google.com. Read The Lever of Riches and The Gifts of Athena and A Culture of Growth. I have benefited most from The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850. You can ask Joel just about anything concerning the Industrial Revolution and he will have an amazingly well-thought answer. He has a new book coming out in November, with Tabellini and Greif. It is correct to consider him as an “Enlightenment thinker.” Brian Albrecht has a good thread on this. And see Matt Yglesias. Note also that Mokyr barely has a presence in the “top five” journals.