Dear Members of the Brown Community,

I am thrilled to share that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded Brown University Professor Emeritus Peter Howitt the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for “for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction.”

We are proud and deeply honored that the work of Professor Howitt, one of our esteemed faculty, has received the international recognition of a Nobel Prize. We will host a virtual news conference at 1 p.m. today, Monday, Oct. 13, in celebration of Professor Howitt. All members of our community are invited to view the livestream.

Professor Howitt is a professor emeritus of economics, having joined the faculty in 2000. He shares one half of the Nobel Prize with Philippe Aghion of the Collège de France and INSEAD in Paris and the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom; the other half was awarded to Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University.

At a time when the role of research in sparking innovation in new technologies is so prominent in discussions about our changing society, I’m sure that people around the world will appreciate learning more about Professor Howitt’s work, along with the contributions of the other prize winners.

Professor Howitt and Philippe Aghion studied the mechanisms behind sustained growth, specifically the ways in which new technologies can affect growth over time. In a research article published in 1992, they constructed a mathematical model for what is called creative destruction: when a new and better product enters the market, the companies selling the older products lose out. The innovation represents something new and is thus creative. However, it is also destructive, as the company whose technology becomes passé is outcompeted.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that in different ways, the laureates show how creative destruction creates conflicts that must be managed in a constructive manner. Otherwise, innovation will be blocked by established companies and interest groups that risk being put at a disadvantage.

Professor Howitt, who was born in Canada, earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at McGill University in 1968, and a master’s in economics the following year at the University of Western Ontario, before moving to the United States to complete a Ph.D. at Northwestern University. From 1972 to 1996 he taught at the University of Western Ontario, combining his work there with visiting positions at Laval University in Quebec, as well as in France, at Paris and Toulouse universities, and in the U.S. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1996, Howitt moved to Ohio State University, before joining the faculty at Brown University in 2000. He has held editorial positions with many leading economics journals and been granted multiple honorary doctorates.

Please join me in congratulating Professor Howitt on this incredible accomplishment. 

Sincerely,

Christina H. Paxson 
President