NU professor from Skokie wins Nobel Prize for economics

Out of the hundreds of people from across the world who are nominated to win a Nobel Prize each year, an achievement awarded to those who have “conferred the greatest benefit to humankind,” only a select few ever receive the honor. 

This month, the prestigious international award was given to a neighbor.

The Nobel Prize committee announced on Monday that it had honored Joel Mokyr, a Skokie resident and a professor at Northwestern University, with the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in “having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress.”

Mokyr shared one half of the Nobel Prize in economics with two other men — Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt — for their work in “the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction.”

“As you can imagine, I’m still a little dazed by what’s transpired today,” Mokyr said on Tuesday during a press conference on Northwestern’s campus.

“But I want to start with something completely unrelated to this prize, which is that today is a very special day for me, seeing the return of 20 live hostages of my countrymen this morning, which warms my heart far more than any other personal achievement that I can ever get,” Mokyr said in reference to the release of the remaining living Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

Stephanie Kulke, a senior editor of Northwestern University’s Office of Global Marketing and Relations, informed The Record that Mokyr will not be back on campus until November.

Mokyr, 79, was born in the Netherlands and studied economics and history in Jerusalem before he went on to become an American citizen and obtain his doctorate in economics at Yale University in 1974.

He first became an assistant professor of economics at Northwestern in 1974 before he served as a visiting professor of economics at a variety of universities — such as Stanford, Harvard, Manchester, College of Dublin and Hebrew University of Jerusalem — in the following decades.

The Skokie resident has served in the position as Northwestern’s Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Economics and History since 1994.

The Village of Skokie celebrated Mokyr’s achievement in a social media post:

Among other things, his research has specialized in the economic history of Europe between 1750 and 1914, with a focus on the intellectual roots of technological progress and the impact of industrialization, Northwestern’s website shows.

“Northwestern is one of the world’s most preeminent universities precisely because of our brilliant faculty, like Professor Mokyr, and they push the boundaries of research in their quest to improve the human experience,” the university’s president Henry Bienen said Tuesday.

Mokyr was rewarded one half of this year’s Nobel prize for “his description of the mecha­nisms that enable scientific breakthroughs and practical applications to enhance each other and create a self-generating process, leading to sustained economic growth,” the Nobel website says.

“Because this is a process that challenges prevailing interests, he also demonstrates the importance of a society that is open to new ideas and permits change,” the webpage continues

The Swedish committees that oversee the Nobel Prizes hand out just five every year. The awards herald groundbreaking work in physics, chemistry, physiology, literature and economic sciences. A Norwegian committee selects the Nobel Peace Prize winner.

This year, 14 people in total received Nobel Prizes.

While the Nobel Prize is significant, Mokyr has previously won other major honors. He is the winner of the 2006 Heineken Award for History and the winner of the 2015 Balzan International Prize for economic history. 

His most recent book, “A Culture of Growth: Origins of the Modern Economic,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2016 and he has supervised over 40 doctoral dissertations in the departments of Economics and History, a Northwestern webpage shows.

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