Joel Mokyr

Mokyr was born on July 26, 1946, in Leiden, the Netherlands.⁠[1]

Mokyr received a B.A. cum laude in economics and history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1968 and went on to Yale UniversityYale UniversityYale University is a research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Its predecessor, the Collegiate School, received a charter in 1701. Trustees chose New Haven in 1716; the institution became Yale College in 1718 and Yale University in 1887. Yale provides undergraduate, graduate and professional education and has 14 undergraduate residential colleges. As of October 2026, its president was Maurie McInnis, who took office in July 2024. In 2026, Yale expanded aid for incoming undergraduates and celebrated its 325th anniversary.Open the full entry, earning an M.Phil. in economics in 1972 and completing his Ph.D. in economics in August 1974 with the dissertation “Industrial Growth and Stagnation in the Low Countries, 1800-1850,” awarded a distinction. He was an acting instructor at Yale in 1972–73.⁠[2]

In 1974 Mokyr joined Northwestern University as an assistant professor of economics; he became associate professor in 1978, professor of economics in 1980 and professor of economics and history in 1981. During this period he held visiting appointments at Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry (1979–80), the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (1981), Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry (1982–83), University College Dublin (spring 1986) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (spring 1993), and held a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1980–81.⁠[2]

His early books were Industrialization in the Low Countries, 1795-1850 (1976) and Why Ireland Starved: An Analytical and Quantitative Study of Irish Poverty, 1800-1851 (1983), which Choice magazine named an outstanding publication in economics in 1983. In 1990 he published The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress, co-winner of the 1990 International Joseph A. Schumpeter Prize.⁠[2]

Mokyr has been editor in chief of the Princeton Economic History of the Western World series since 1993; he was co-editor of the Journal of Economic History from June 1994 to July 1998 and editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History from 1995 to 2003.⁠[2]

From 1994 Mokyr has held the Robert H. Strotz Professorship of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University; he chaired the economics department from 1998 to 2001 and was a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 2001–02. He is also a Sackler Professorial Fellow at the Eitan Berglas School of Economics, Tel Aviv University.⁠[2]

Mokyr became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996, was elected a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001 and was elected a foreign member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in 2004.⁠[2]

In 2002 Mokyr published The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy, which received the American Political Science Association’s Don K. Price Prize. He served as president of the Economic History Association in 2002–03, having been its vice president in 1993–94.⁠[2]

On November 29, 2016, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry (a16z) released the a16z Podcast episode “a16z Podcast: Knowledge Builds Technology and Technology Builds Knowledge,” with a16z editor Sonal Chokshi listed on the episode page, in which Mokyr discussed his book A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy. The episode was uploaded to the a16z YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel on January 1, 2019.⁠[3][4]

The episode looked back at technological advances between 1500 and 1700 and during the Industrial Revolution, including electricity, cheaper steel, automated looms, water pumping in coal mines and the measurement of longitude at sea. Mokyr argued that a competitive, open market of ideas drove these advances, which the episode likened to a transnational “Republic of Letters” and the early blogosphere; he suggested that conditions such as open-access science and weak ties may be needed to sustain growth today, and argued that the alternative to innovation is stagnation. The discussion also covered how growth is measured, its international and institutional dimensions and the role of shared problems such as climate change.⁠[3]

On October 13, 2025, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that one half of the 2025 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred NobelAlfred NobelAlfred Nobel (1833–1896) was a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor and industrialist who invented dynamite, the blasting cap, blasting gelatine and the smokeless powder ballistite and founded enterprises in more than 20 countries. Through his will he left his fortune to establish the five Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace.Open the full entry would go to Mokyr “for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress,” with the other half shared by Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt. At the time of the award he was affiliated with Northwestern University and Tel Aviv University.⁠[5][1]

Mokyr used historical sources to study why sustained growth became the norm after long periods of stagnation; he argued that innovations build on one another only when people understand why they work, which was often lacking before the Industrial Revolution, and that societies must be open to new ideas and accept change.⁠[5]

Personal website: https://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~jmokyr/ (opens in a new window).⁠[6]

Northwestern University: Official website: https://www.northwestern.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[6]