Philippe Aghion

Philippe Aghion is Professor of Economics of Institutions, Innovation and Growth at the Collège de France, the Kurt Björklund Chaired Professor in Innovation and Growth at INSEAD, and Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2025, he received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, jointly with Peter Howitt and Joel Mokyr, for their theory of growth through creative destruction.

With Howitt, Aghion pioneered the Schumpeterian growth paradigm, analysing how innovation, firm entry and exit, and competition drive long-term economic growth. Their work is set out in Endogenous Growth Theory (MIT Press, 1998) and The Economics of Growth (MIT Press, 2009). His more recent book The Power of Creative Destruction (2021, with C. Antonin and S. Bunel) links innovation, inequality, and the role of the state.

From 2002 to 2015, Aghion was Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He co-chaired France's Artificial Intelligence Commission (2023–2024) and served as President of the European Economic Association in 2017. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the British Academy.

Aghion graduated from the École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay and holds a PhD in Economics from Harvard University.