Philippe Aghion

Philippe Mario Aghion is a French economist who is Chair of Economics of Institutions, Innovation and Growth professor at the Collège de France, Kurt Björklund Chaired Professor in Innovation and Growth at INSEAD, and Visiting Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics.

Aghion and Peter Howitt are known for the Aghion–Howitt model. For this work, they shared half of the 2025 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction".

Early life and education Philippe Aghion was born in Paris in 1956, a French fashion designer and founder of the French fashion house Chloé. In an interview, Aghion recalled that he grew up surrounded by artists, including Karl Lagerfeld. He received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1987.

In 2020, Aghion became The Kurt Björklund Chaired Professor in Innovation and Growth at INSEAD and the academic director of INSEAD’s Economics of Innovation Lab. That year, he became visiting professor at LSE and continued to be an associate at LSE's Centre for Economic Performance.

Other activities Aghion was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009 and he is a member of the Executive and Supervisory Committee (ESC) of CERGE-EI. He was president of the European Economic Association in 2017. He has been an editor of the Annual Review of Economics since 2018.

Ahead of the 2012 French presidential election, Aghion co-signed an appeal of several economists in support of candidate François Hollande.

In 2016, Aghion was appointed by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to an expert group advising the High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth, which was co-chaired by presidents François Hollande of France and Jacob Zuma of South Africa. In 2021, he was appointed to the World Bank–International Monetary Fund High-Level Advisory Group (HLAG) on Sustainable and Inclusive Recovery and Growth, co-chaired by Mari Pangestu, Ceyla Pazarbasioglu, and Nicholas Stern.

Additional advisory activities include: Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education – Economics Institute (CERGE-EI), Member of the Board of Trustees Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional (CREI), Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), Member of the Advisory Board

Research

In 1992, together with Peter Howitt, he proposed a foundational model of Schumpeterian endogenous growth theory, centered on innovation and creative destruction.

In the 2000s, he explored the links between competition, institutions, and growth, notably the inverted-U relationship between competition intensity and innovation.

AOC Media has criticized Aghion for techno-optimism, an attachment to GDP growth as the headline indicator, and a limited understanding of the contemporary multi-factor environmental crisis.

Aghion–Howitt (1992) and the paradox of creative destruction According to Ufuk Akcigit, the framework developed by Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt in their 1992 article

The "Middle-Income Trap"

Philippe Aghion has also contributed to the analysis of the "middle-income trap," referring to the difficulty some emerging economies face in crossing the threshold to advanced-economy status. In his view, growth driven by capital accumulation and technological imitation first enables rapid catch-up but reaches its limits as countries approach the technological frontier. whose work initially focused on an international comparison of university autonomy, and then on the implementation of campuses of academic excellence .

Political views As a student in France, he was a communist sympathizer.

During the 2012 French presidential election, he signed the appeal of economists supporting candidate François Hollande because of "the relevance of the proposed options, in particular with regard to the recovery of growth and employment". In 2017, he expressed his support for Emmanuel Macron.

Honours and awards Honours Knight of the Legion of Honour (2012) Officer of the Ordre national du Mérite (2018)

Awards In 2019, Aghion and Peter Howitt received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics. He and Howitt were also awarded half of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2025 "for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction", the other half going to Joel Mokyr.

Books Aghion, Philippe; Antonin, Celine; Bunel, Simon (2021): The Power of Creative Destruction: Economic Upheaval and the Wealth of Nations. Harvard University Press. . Aghion, Philippe; Howitt, Peter (2009); The Economics of Growth. MIT Press. Aghion, Philippe; Griffith, Rachel (2006). Competition and Growth. MIT Press. Aghion, Philippe; Durlauf, Steven N. (2005). Handbook of economic growth. 1A. Amsterdam: Elsevier. . Aghion, Philippe; Durlauf, Steven N. (2005). Handbook of economic growth. 1B. Amsterdam: Elsevier. . Aghion, Philippe; Howitt, Peter (1998). Endogenous growth theory. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. .