About

Joel Mokyr is the Robert H. Strotz Professor at Northwestern University, with a PhD from Yale University obtained in 1974. His research focuses on the economic history of Europe, particularly during the period 1750-1914. He specializes in understanding the economic and intellectual roots of technological progress and the growth of useful knowledge in European societies. His work explores how industrialization and economic progress have impacted economic welfare. Mokyr is a distinguished scholar, being a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, the Cliometric Society, the British Academy, the Italian Accademia dei Lincei, and the Dutch Royal Academy. He has served as President of the Economic History Association, editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, and co-editor of the Journal of Economic History. Currently, he is a co-editor of the Princeton University Press Economic History of the World series. Mokyr has received several prestigious awards, including the 2006 Heineken Award for History and the 2015 Balzan International Prize for economic history. His most recent book, 'A Culture of Growth: Origins of the Modern Economy,' was published in 2016. He has supervised over forty doctoral dissertations in Economics and History.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economy
• Economic growth
• Economics
• Economic history
• Market economy
• Engineering
• Management
• Economic geography
• Geography
• Civil engineering
• Law
• Labour economics
• History
• Archaeology

Selected publications

• Culture and Social Organizations in the Great Reversal: Europe and China, 1000-2000

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Culture Versus Institutions in the Great Enrichment

  2025-01-01 · 3 citations

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Is there a connection between the Industrial Revolution and the eighteenth century Enlightenment? The Enlightenment was a very broad cultural movement with many moving parts, but the one most relevant to economic history is what is known as the Industrial Enlightenment, a movement that directly advocated institutions that supported and promoted the accumulation and dissemination of technological progress and economic growth. These institutions included those that directly helped incentivize the accumulation of useful knowledge such as patronage and reputation effects, as well as patents, prizes, and other rewards to successful inventors. The movement also supported dissemination of knowledge through scholarly societies, publications, and various informal networks. The chapter concludes that both culture and the institutions it supported created a fertile ground for the rapid economic growth ignited by the Industrial Revolution.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Two Paths to Prosperity

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2025-10-30 · 2 citations

  book

  How the social organization of Europe and China shaped their divergent economic and political trajectories over the past millennium In the eleventh century, when Europe was still backward and poor, China was a rich and sophisticated civilization. Yet Europe became the birthplace of democracy and the Industrial Revolution, driving the Great Enrichment, while China stagnated until the end of the twentieth century and was always ruled by autocracies. Two Paths to Prosperity traces the emergence of two very different social organizations in premodern China and Europe—the clan and the corporation—showing how they were key factors in the economic and political divergence of these two great civilizations. In this landmark book, three leading economists offer a bold new account of why Europe and China evolved along such different trajectories. In the early Middle Ages, public goods like risk sharing, religious worship, education, and conflict resolution were provided by nonstate organizations in both societies. China increasingly relied on kin-based cooperation within clans, while weaker kinship ties in Europe gave rise to corporations such as guilds, universities, and self-governing towns. Despite performing similar functions, clans and corporations were built on very different principles—with lasting consequences until today. Providing a novel answer to a fundamental question in economic and political history, Two Paths to Prosperity shows how extended kinship in Chinese society facilitated the consolidation of autocracy and hindered innovation and economic development, and how corporations in Europe influenced emerging state institutions and set the stage for the Industrial Revolution.

  PublisherDOI

• Culture and Social Organizations in the Great Reversal: Europe and China, 1000-2000

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• The Marshall Plan: Then and Now

  Washington, DC: World Bank eBooks · 2025-10-14

  bookOpen accessSenior author

  This paper is a product of the Development Policy Team, Development Economics. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Two Paths to Prosperity

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2025-11-04

  book
  PublisherDOI

• Social Organizations and Political Institutions: Why China and Europe Diverged

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Chapter 26 Creative Destruction or Destructive Creation? A Prelude to the Industrial Revolution

  Harvard University Press eBooks · 2023-08-16

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Social organizations and political institutions: why China and Europe diverged

  Economica · 2023-12-27 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  Abstract This paper discusses the historical and social origins of the bifurcation in the political institutions of China and Western Europe. An important factor, recognized in the literature, is that China centralized state institutions very early on, while Europe remained politically fragmented for much longer. These initial differences, however, were amplified by the different social organizations (clans in China, corporate structures in Europe) that spread in these two societies at the turn of the first millennium AD. State institutions interacted with these organizations, and were shaped and influenced by this interaction. The paper discusses the many ways in which corporate organizations contributed to the emergence of representative institutions and gave prominence to the Rule of Law in the early stages of state formation in Europe, and how specific features of lineage organizations contributed to the consolidation of the Imperial regime in China.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Mechanics of the Industrial Revolution

  Journal of Political Economy · 2022 · 72 citations

  • Economics
  • Labour economics
  • Economic history

  Although there are many competing explanations for the Industrial Revolution, there has been no effort to evaluate them econometrically. This paper analyzes how the very different patterns of growth across the counties of England between the 1760s and 1830s can be explained by a wide range of potential variables. We find that industrialization occurred in areas that began with low wages but high mechanical skills, whereas other variables, such as literacy, banks, and proximity to coal, have little explanatory power. Against the view that living standards were stagnant during the Industrial Revolution, we find that real wages rose sharply in the industrializing north and declined in the previously prosperous south.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Hans‐Joachim Voth

  49 shared

• Gavin Wright

  Stanford University

  28 shared

• Nathan Rosenberg

  26 shared

• James D. Klein

  25 shared

• Glen G. Cain

  25 shared

• Marjorie B. McElroy

  25 shared

• Eli Seidman

  25 shared

• Saul H. Hymans

  25 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1978

• M.A., Economics

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1975

• B.A., Economics

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1973

Awards & honors

• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Fellow of the Econometric Society
• Fellow of the Cliometric Society
• Fellow of the British Academy
• Fellow of the Italian Accademia dei Lincei