【Text by Observers Network, Liu Bai】The 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics was announced yesterday (13th), with all three laureates warning against government policies that may suppress innovation and limit economic growth.

Among them, the Dutch-born laureate, Israeli-American economist Joel Mokyr, expressed strong dissatisfaction with the Trump administration, criticizing its science policy as "the biggest self-defeating act in history," at least the most serious self-harm since the Ming Dynasty in China.

On the 13th, he told Reuters that his research focuses on "why we are much wealthier and live much better than our grandfathers." At the same time, he is concerned that the United States may lose its leading position in research and education during the Trump administration.

"The attack by this administration on higher education and research is perhaps the biggest self-defeating act in history, at least the most serious self-harm since the Ming Dynasty effectively banned scientific exploration," he said. "This behavior is self-destructive and entirely driven by irrelevant political factors."

Joel Mokyr, UBS Group website

Mokyr also stated in an interview with The New York Times that those who invest time and money exploring knowledge will be rewarded through patents and peer recognition; to maintain this system, "a government that prioritizes technology" is needed.

"These ideas are no longer as self-evident as they once were," he added. Some governments support growth and innovation, such as China, but others are skeptical about it.

However, he did not specify any particular country.

Mokyr added that innovation can address two core challenges facing the world today: climate change and aging populations. To achieve such innovation, the government must encourage scientific development and "create an environment where the best talent can feel safe to do the work they need to do," including open immigration.

In addition to Mokyr, the Nobel Prize in Economics was also awarded to Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt. Mokyr received half of the prize money alone, recognizing his "discovery of the prerequisites for achieving sustained growth through technological progress."

The Nobel official introduction states that Mokyr used historical data to reveal why sustained growth has become a new norm. He pointed out that for innovation to continue in a self-generating way, we not only need to know that a certain technology "works," but also understand the scientific principles behind why it works. Before the Industrial Revolution, the latter point was often missing, making it difficult to further develop based on new discoveries and inventions. He also emphasized that society must remain open to new ideas and allow for change.

Mokyr was born in Leiden, the Netherlands in 1946, earned his Ph.D. from Yale University in the United States in 1974, and is currently a professor at Northwestern University. His father was a civil servant, and his mother was a Jewish Holocaust survivor from the Netherlands. When Mokyr was one year old, his father died of cancer, and his mother took him back to the Israeli city of Haifa, raising him alone.

As an economic historian, Mokyr believes that most of human history was stagnant, and the growth over the past 200 years is a special phenomenon. If we cannot maintain the knowledge and institutional environment that fosters innovation, the world could fall back into stagnation.

Additionally, artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to greatly accelerate the accumulation of "useful knowledge" and strengthen the feedback loop between scientific principles and technological applications. However, it is also necessary to pay attention to the negative effects of technological progress and address them through good institutions and policies.

In 2016, Mokyr published a book titled "The Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy," detailing his views on the Industrial Revolution.

In the book, he pointed out that a unique culture of growth in early modern Europe and the European Enlightenment laid the foundation for scientific progress and groundbreaking inventions, which was the reason for this explosive technological and economic development. This was not the result of any cultural superiority of Europe, but rather the complete transformation of the beliefs, values, and preferences of people who were at the center of the historical stage, i.e., "cultural change" drove the emergence of innovative methods.

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