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The Nobel Prize Honors Innovation
Porter's Journal Issue #118, Volume #2
Porter Stansberry
October 13, 2025
It Praises Growth, Creative Destruction, And Free Trade
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Nobel Prize in economics… Free trade and creative destruction honored… Tariffs and protectionism pooh-poohed… Echoing Adam Smith and David Ricardo… The world needs to hear it… A crypto liquidation event… |
Table of Contents
The Nobel Prize committee has seen the light.
Today, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to three European economists, Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt, for their decades of contributions to understanding the relationship between technological innovation and sustained economic growth.
Their work reveals how technological progress has transformed societies over the past two centuries, lifting billions out of poverty, improving health, and raising the overall standard of living. The Nobel award recognizes a powerful body of research that provides both historical insight and theoretical modeling, helping economists and policymakers better understand how growth happens – and how it can be nurtured in a world facing new challenges and rapid change.
For most of human history, economic development was slow and short-lived. Civilizations occasionally experienced bursts of prosperity because of specific inventions or favorable conditions, but these were rarely sustained over time. Growth would eventually plateau, often due to limited scientific understanding or institutional barriers. As John Hassler, chair of the Nobel committee, remarked during the announcement, “Despite important discoveries that improved living conditions, growth leveled off.” This pattern persisted for centuries until the Industrial Revolution unleashed waves of innovation and economic transformation.