Honorary Western University professor shares in Nobel Prize win

An honorary professor of economics at Western University is among a group of three researchers who won this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in economics.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Monday that Peter Howitt, along with Dutch-born Joel Mokyr and Philippe Aghion of France, received the prize for “having explained innovation-driven economic growth.”

Reached early Monday, Howitt told the Canadian Press he found out about the prize from a persistent Swedish reporter who called his wife’s phone early in the morning, even before the committee could reach the economist.

“It’s just the dream of a lifetime come true,” he said. “We didn’t have any champagne in the fridge in anticipation of this.”

Howitt and Aghion relied on mathematics to explain how creative destruction works,