Joel Mokyr
American-Israeli economic historianWikipedia
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Search complete. 6 mentions across 5 episodes found for "Joel Mokyr".
Sep 21, 2026
James MarriottGUEST
But it's been very interestingly revived as an idea recently by, uh, Steven Pinker talks about it very compellingly in his book, uh, The Better Angels of Our Nature.
James MarriottGUEST
The economist Joel Mokyr probably has done more than anyone to revive the idea that this community of in- in- intellectuals writing to each o- wr- writing to each other in Europe was immensely important in driving scientific innovation, economic growth, and ultimately the Industrial Revolution.
James MarriottGUEST
I mean, Joel Mokyr goes so far as to say it's the single cultural fact that explains the Industrial Revolution, is this community of idea sharing that, that grew up in Europe.
James MarriottGUEST
That sounds extravagant, but I think we need to s...
David LinHOST
Why do some nations stay on top of the technological innovation front while others fall behind? Can the United States maintain its lead in terms of innovation even while tariffs rise, immigration tightens, and China pushes into advanced technologies? And will AI, artificial intelligence, deliver the growth that its backers promise, or will AI kill us all by twenty thirty, as one particular ex-anthropic researcher has warned could happen? Our next guest is Joel Mokyr.
David LinHOST
He is a professor of economics and history at Northwestern University, and he is the co-winner of the twenty twenty five Nobel Prize in Economics, alongside Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt.
David LinHOST
They were awarded for explaining how innovation drives growth, and he's best known for studying one of the biggest questions in economics, which is why did humanity suddenly begin experiencing sustained economic growth after thousands of years in which living standards improved only very slowly? We're gonna answer that question and extrapolate into the future and see how economic growth will transpire over the next decade and beyond.
Johan NorbergGUEST
Um, they-- instead of a democracy, they had a very rigid oligarchy and, uh, mostly geared towards, uh, warfare, um, which means that they didn't leave us much of a, of a legacy when it comes to technology, the arts, um, when it comes to literature, uh, but only stories about warfare.
Johan NorbergGUEST
And many of them, I argue, um, uh, stories that are made up by ancient historians and by Hollywood [chuckles] because there's always something impressive about sort of, um, kind of warfare societies to, uh...
Johan NorbergGUEST
in our stories.
Johan NorbergGUEST
Um, but they are really separate in the way that I would argue that Athens came up with the very concept of intellectual innovation, not that they were the first to be innovative, but the first who actually celebrated and cherished, ch- cherished innovation.
10 MINS LATER
Johan NorbergGUEST
Yeah.
Johan NorbergGUEST
It's an extraordinary period.
Johan NorbergGUEST
So, um, some economic historians claim that 1,000 years ago, the Chinese were close to an industrial revolution in the economy and some sort of intellectual renaissance in, um, in philosophy, in the arts, in literature.
Johan NorbergGUEST
And, uh, and you might argue that this is just one giant example of unintended consequences, that the, um, Song emperors when they gained control in the late 10th century, they might have wanted to...
Johan RoosGUEST
I am an optimist in myself.
Johan RoosGUEST
I've always been an optimist and I'm a techno-optimist, but to quote Mokyr, what could possibly wrong political stupidity? Yeah.
Johan RoosGUEST
But it is, in a sense, I think it's fantastic.
Johan RoosGUEST
New tools have always come to us and we've used them in the same way.
Jonathan HaskelGUEST
I mean, there's lots of studies.
Jonathan HaskelGUEST
So Joel Mokyr, the, uh, um, economic historian from Northwestern, um, has studied extensively the sort of network-
Markus BrunnermeierHOST
Mm-hmm
Jonathan HaskelGUEST
... of, um, skills, the network of information flows and so forth, which either helped or hindered, uh, these types of, uh, diffusion of these technologies.