Joel Mokyr
| Joel Mokyr | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
26 July 1946 Leiden, Netherlands |
| Nationality | Israeli American |
| Spouse(s) | Margalit Mokyr; 2 children |
| Institution | Northwestern University |
| Field | Economic history |
| Alma mater |
Yale University Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
| Doctoral students |
Avner Greif |
| Awards | Balzan Prize (2015) |
Joel Mokyr (born 26 July 1946) is a Netherlands-born American-Israeli economic historian. He is the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and professor of economics and history at Northwestern University, and Sackler Professor at the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at the University of Tel Aviv.
Mokyr was born in Leiden, Netherlands. His father, a civil servant, and his mother were Dutch Jews who survived the Holocaust. His father died of cancer when Mokyr was a year old. Mokyr was raised by his mother in Haifa, Israel.
Mokyr began working at Northwestern University in 1974, having completed his PhD at Yale University. A former editor of the Journal of Economic History and President of the Economic History Association, he served as the editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History.
He continues to serve as editor in chief of a book series published by Princeton University Press, The Princeton University Press Economic History of the Western World. A former chair of the Economics Department and President of the Economic History Association, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a number of comparable institutions in Europe.
He became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001.
Mokyr posits that the Industrial Revolution was the result of culture and institutions. He argues that the root of modernity is in "the emergence of a belief in the usefulness of progress", and that "it was a turning point when intellectuals started to conceive of knowledge as cumulative".
Mokyr has outlined three reasons why societies may show resistance to new technologies: "First, there are the incumbents who fear a threat to the stream of rents generated by their physical capital, human capital, market power, or political influence. Innovation inevitably disrupt such rents. Second, there is the concern about broader repercussions: innovations have unintended ripple effects on a host of social and political variables that may generate additional costs and pain to people even if they themselves have no direct say over whether to adopt the innovation. And beyond that there is risk- and loss-aversion, the often well-founded fear than a new technique may have unanticipated and unknowable consequences. These three motives often merge and create powerful forces that use political power and persuasion to thwart innovations. As a result, technological progress does not follow a linear and neat trajectory. It is, as social constructionists have been trying to tell us for decades, a profoundly political process."
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