Philippe Aghion

Philippe Mario Aghion^[2] FBA (French: [filip aɡjɔ̃]; born 17 August 1956)^[3] is a French economist who is Chair of Economics of Institutions, Innovation and Growth professor at the Collège de France and the Kurt Björklund Chaired Professor in Innovation and Growth at INSEAD.^[4] He is also a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.^[4][5]

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".^[6]

Philippe Aghion was born in Paris in 1956,^[7] he is the son of Gaby Aghion,^[8] a French fashion designer and founder of the French fashion house Chloé.^[8] Gaby is said to have coined the phrase prêt-à-porter.^[9][8] His father, Raymond Aghion, had an art gallery in Boulevard Saint-Germain.^[10] Both his parents are from Jewish families from Alexandria, Egypt.^[10] They later moved to Paris, in the Quartier latin before buying a house in Neuilly-sur-Seine.^[10] In an interview, Aghion recalled that he grew up surrounded by artists, including Karl Lagerfeld.^[8]

Aghion graduated from the mathematics section of the École normale supérieure de Cachan (now ENS Paris-Saclay, University of Paris-Saclay), and obtained a diplôme d'études approfondies and a doctorat de troisième cycle (third cycle doctorate) in mathematical economics from the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne.^[11] He received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1987.^[11]

Aghion began his academic career in 1987 when he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an Assistant Professor.^[11] In 1989 he returned to France and became a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).^[11] In 1990, he was appointed Deputy Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD),^[11] before moving to the Nuffield College, Oxford and then University College London in 1996.^[11] In 2002, he returned to Harvard where he became the Robert C. Waggoner Professor in Economics, a chair he held until 2015 when he was named Centennial Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics (LSE).^[12][11]

In 2015, as he became professor at LSE, Aghion was also appointed Chair of Economics at College de France, a special academic institution in France. Statutory chair professorship at College de France is a position highly regarded among French academia.^[13]

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.^[14]

Aghion was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009^[15] and he is a member of the Executive and Supervisory Committee (ESC) of CERGE-EI.^[16][17] He was president of the European Economic Association in 2017.^[18] He has been an editor of the Annual Review of Economics since 2018.^[19]

Ahead of the 2012 French presidential election, Aghion co-signed an appeal of several economists in support of candidate François Hollande.^[20]

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.^[21] 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.^[22]

Additional advisory activities include:

• Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education – Economics Institute (CERGE-EI), Member of the Board of Trustees^[23]
• Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional (CREI), Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), Member of the Advisory Board^[24]

Philippe Aghion led a working group of ten international experts^[25] whose work initially focused on an international comparison of university autonomy, and then on the implementation of campuses of academic excellence (Initiative d'excellence).^[25] A two-part report was submitted in January 2010 to the Minister of Higher Education Valérie Pécresse.^[25]

This report recommended establishing "balanced governance" in universities. Drawing on the examples of Harvard, MIT, Oxford, or Cambridge, it acknowledged that there is no single governance model.^[26]

It proposed the creation of two governing bodies at the head of universities. The first, the board of directors, would be composed mostly of external members, who would appoint a president with extensive powers. The second would be embodied in an "academic senate", a genuine forum for scientific and pedagogical proposals.^[26]

As a student, he was a communist and he even attended the Communist Party's cadre school in the hope of becoming a full-time party official.^[27]

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".^[28] In 2017, he expressed his support for Emmanuel Macron.^[29]

• Knight of the Legion of Honour (2012)^[2]
• Officer of the Ordre national du Mérite (2018)^[30]

In 2019, Aghion and Peter Howitt received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics.^[31] 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.^[7]

• Aghion, Philippe; Antonin, Celine; Bunel, Simon (2021): The Power of Creative Destruction: Economic Upheaval and the Wealth of Nations. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-97116-5.
• Aghion, Philippe; Howitt, Peter (2009); The Economics of Growth. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01263-8
• Aghion, Philippe; Griffith, Rachel (2006). Competition and Growth. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01218-8
• Aghion, Philippe; Durlauf, Steven N. (2005). Handbook of economic growth. 1A. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-52041-8.
• Aghion, Philippe; Durlauf, Steven N. (2005). Handbook of economic growth. 1B. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-52043-2.
• Aghion, Philippe; Howitt, Peter (1998). Endogenous growth theory. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01166-2.

• List of Jewish Nobel laureates

• Philippe Aghion on Nobelprize.org