The economics Nobel went to three researchers who showed how growth is driven by “creative destruction.”
Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt demonstrated that innovation is what pushes economies forwards: New technologies and methods drive out old ones, sometimes destroying a sector of the economy — and some jobs — but improving the quality of our lives overall.
A classic example would be the growth of mechanized farming, which put millions of farmers out of work but led to a richer and better-fed world. Mokyr took half the award, for identifying the mechanism, while Aghion and Howitt shared the other half, for creating the mathematical model for how products enter the market and drive older ones out.