Nobel prize goes to Brown researcher, 2 others for explaining innovation

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three researchers who probed the process of business innovation won the Nobel memorial prize in economics Monday for explaining how new products and inventions promote economic growth and human welfare, even as they leave older companies in the dust.

Their work was credited with helping economists better understand how ideas and technology succeed by disrupting established ways — a process as old as steam locomotives replacing horse-drawn wagons and as contemporary as e-commerce shuttering shopping malls.

Dutch-born Joel Mokyr, 79, is at Northwestern University; Philippe Aghion, 69, works at the Collège de France and the London School of Economics; and Canadian-born Peter Howitt, 79, is at Brown University.

The winners were credited with better explaining and quantifyin