To Infinity and Beyond! Anthropocentric Stories of Innovation and Growth

Wim Naudé
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Wim Naudé: RWTH Aachen University & University of Coimbra, CeBER

No 2026-03, CeBER Working Papers from Centre for Business and Economics Research (CeBER), University of Coimbra

Abstract: This paper provides a non-technical and selective explanation of the theory of innovation and economic growth, in light of the 2025 Bank of Sweden Prize in Memory of Alfred Nobel, awarded to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt. Their body of scholarship is critically evaluated, and the useful, less useful, and most problematic aspects are highlighted. The verdict is that it is largely a collection of anthropocentric stories of innovation and growth. It avoids spelling out why sustained growth is desirable, it reduces innovation’s ultimate goal to the pursuit of economic growth, it is based on a deep-seated notion of human exceptionalism, and it promotes directed technical change - based on the assumption that all resources are fungible and can be substituted - as a way to sustain economic growth without causing environmental destruction. Their analysis of growth is useful for highlighting the importance of scientific knowledge, for showing that creative destruction can be more destructive than creative, and that economic growth will only be sustained under very special conditions. However, the failure to satisfactorily address energy in innovation and growth remains a glaring gap in modern economic growth theory. For economics to become more useful, it would require becoming an Earth Systems Science based on biocentric holism.

Keywords: Innovation; economic growth; technology; sustainability; energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J11 J24 O31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 85 pages
Date: 2026-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
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