Many have now formed their opinions about the 2025 Nobel Economics Prize and how its focus signals to the world, the criticality of the economics of innovation and growth. However, what was also curious was the quip by the 2025 Laureate Joel Mokyr (one of the three winners) that ‘economic historians don’t win the prize’.

The discipline often undervalues the slow, evidentiary craft of archival work. Yet, when the world grows noisy, amid disruptions by Artificial Intelligence, inequality, fiscal overhangs and geopolitical shocks, policy debates turn to long-run narratives that economic historians assemble.

Growth as social technology first

Mokyr’s central lesson, sharpened by the pedagogy of scholars such as Carnegie Mellon economic historian David Hounshell, is that modern growth is

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