Joel Mokyr

Joel Mokyr was born in Leiden, Netherlands, to Holocaust survivors.  When he was nine years old, his mother immigrated with him to Israel, where Mokyr completed his military service and earned his undergraduate degree. He later moved to the United States to continue his studies, receiving an MPhil and PhD in economics at Yale University.

Discussing his immigrant heritage in a convocation speech delivered to graduates of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University in 2026, Mokyr noted, “America was and is a collection of hundreds of ethnicities, religions, languages, and phenotypes. It is that what makes us American.”

Today, Mokyr is one of the world’s leading economic historians, specializing in the economics of technological innovation and population change. He is the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and professor of economics and history at Northwestern University, where he has taught for more than 50 years, and also serves as a Sackler Professorial Fellow at the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at Tel Aviv University. Mokyr has authored more than 100 articles and books in his field, including the books The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress and A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy.

Mokyr has received numerous honors, including the Dr. A. H. Heineken Prize for History offered by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Balzan Prize for Economic History. In 2025, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt, for his work showing how technological progress has led to sustained economic growth.

Photo by Octavio Jones via Getty Images. Published June 2026