On October 13, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics will be awarded to economists Joel Mogil, Philip Agion and Peter Hoyt in recognition of their explanations of the theory of innovation-driven economic growth.
According to the Nobel Prize website, the 69-year-old portrait of Philip Argion is placed in the middle of the three, who, along with another laureate, Hoyt, built a mathematical model in a 1992 paper to illustrate the importance of “destroying innovation” for sustained economic growth.
Father opens a gallery
Mother makes fashionable women's clothes
In addition to academic research, Aguion is passionate about the vast real world and has provided economic policy advice to former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, former French President Hollande and current French President Macron. According to previous interviews, his diverse interests and interdisciplinary research inspiration came from his parents.
His father, Raymond and his mother, Gabrielle, were both Jews from the port of Alexandria, Egypt, and both emigrated to Paris after their marriage. The father of Argion opened a modernist gallery, and his mother, Gabrielle, was interested in women's fashion from a young age, and founded the famous "Chloé Conversion" brand. Gabrielle was also the inventor of the term "prêt-à-porter" (luxury clothing), creating a style that combines feminine aesthetics, refined cuts and mass production, breaking the situation of high-end brand monopoly fashion design, bringing a sense of design to a wider female group.
Agion said that despite his parents’ busy work, he was often taken home to discuss artistic, political and academic topics, giving him an international vision and broad knowledge from childhood. He also integrated with his family into the intellectual circle on the left bank of Paris. His mother, Gabrielle, repeatedly broke conventional bold practices in the fashion field, and planted the seeds of creativity for Agion’s later study of the paradigm of “destructive creation”.
Agion studied mathematics at the Cassand Higher Teaching College and the First University of Paris, and obtained a doctorate in Applied Mathematics and Economics in 1983. Then, on the advice of his tutor, he turned to economics and went to Harvard University in the United States to continue his doctorate.
In 1987, he obtained a doctorate from Harvard University and later became a professor at Harvard University. He is currently a professor at the College of France, the London School of Economics, the Paris School of Economics, the European School of Business Administration, and has been elected as a member of the Academy of Sciences as a foreign national in both the United Kingdom and the United States.
Widespread hunting
Cross-border economic and political AI research
Agion’s research perspective is not only limited to developed countries in Europe and America, but also often extends to economics.He has studied developing countries’ pathways and has thoroughly studied Argentina’s decline in the 20th century and the development of South Korea after the Asian financial crisis.
Agion was deeply involved in French politics. In 2012, he and his fellow French economists issued an open letter entitled “We as economists support only Hollande”. Agion believed that Hollande’s economic plan was “reasonable and feasible” and especially Hollande adopted his recommendations on growth and employment. Later, under Hollande’s suggestion, Agion was trusted by Ban Ki-moon as an expert adviser to the United Nations High-Level Committee on Employment and Economic Growth. In the 2017 French election, Agion supported Macron and became the latter’s adviser.
In addition, Agion also has a strong enthusiasm for participating in real social issues. In recent years, he has published many articles focusing on the development of artificial intelligence. He believes that progress in AI will bring GDP growth of 0.8 to 1 percentage point to the French economy every year, and the potential brought by growth will far exceed the social costs caused by unemployment of some jobs (such as administrative office workers).
He also called on the French to "live and learn". In 2024, he published an article "One Year Old, Increase Wisdom (and Stay Away from the Frontier)" to discuss the impact of AI development on the careers of older workers. He found that although older people are more vulnerable than younger people, older people with higher education levels, especially those studying STEM subjects, can cope with the impact of technological change more calmly.
In 2025, he and his French economist Zuckerman broke out a famous public debate against the idea that the latter would impose additional taxes on the wealthy (known as the “Zuckerman Tax” in French society).Argion believes that the common mistake people make is to “look at income inequality with a static eye” while ignoring entrepreneurship and “destructive innovation” can create more wealth, and only the formation of sustained economic growth can eliminate the harm caused by inequality.
Red Star News Press Release