T he current Nobel Prize in Economics has been given to three economists — Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt — who have studied the role of technological change and creative destruction in economic growth. While the work of the latter two would be more readily recognisable to the modern economist, Mokyr adopts a historical lens to study the relationship between knowledge, ideas and economic growth.

What was Mokyr’s model?

Mokyr’s model makes a distinction between two kinds of knowledge: propositional and prescriptive. The former is knowledge about scientific phenomena and principles, while the latter concerns knowledge about techniques. Economic growth occurs with an increase in both kinds of knowledge, where societies possess not just scientific or theoretical knowledge, bu

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