One of the co-winners of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics, Frenchman Philippe Aghion, called on European countries on Monday, October 13, to not allow China and the United States to monopolize technological innovation. “I think European countries must realize that we should no longer allow the United States and China to become technological leaders and lose to them,” he said, accompanied by the Nobel committee in Stockholm.
Philippe Aghion and Canadian Peter Howitt are rewarded for having developed a mathematical model that describes the process of “creative destruction”, that is, when the arrival on the market of a new and better product displaces companies selling older products.
There is no “financial ecosystem conducive to innovation”
Philippe Aghion returned to the wealth gap that has widened between the United States and the euro zone since the 1980s. “After a period in which Europe caught up with the United States in terms of GDP per capita between World War II and the mid-1980s,” the gap has widened again, the French economist explained.
“The main reason is that we have not managed to implement major technological innovations. We have remained confined to medium technological advances, which is totally appropriate (as the Draghi report explains), because we do not have the appropriate policies and institutions to innovate in the field of high technologies,” said Philippe Aghion.
The other half of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to American-Israeli Joel Mokyr for identifying the preconditions for sustainable growth through technological progress. The Nobel Prize consists of a diploma, a medal and a check for 11 million crowns (around one million euros), which will be distributed if there are several winners.
Source: BFM TV
