Philippe Aghion

Philippe Mario Aghion FBA (born 17 August 1956) is a French economist who is a professor at the Collège de France, at INSEAD, and at the London School of Economics. He also teaches at the Paris School of Economics. From 2002 to 2015, he was the Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Prior to that, he was a professor at University College London, an Official Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, and an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Early life and education

Philippe Aghion was born in Paris in 1956, the son of Gaby and Raymond Aghion. He graduated from the mathematics section of the École normale supérieure de Cachan, and obtained a diplôme d'études approfondies (DEA) in mathematical economics from the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. He received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1987.

Career

His research focuses on economic growth and innovation. With Peter Howitt, he developed the "Schumpeterian paradigm", and extended the paradigm in several directions; much of the resulting work is summarized in his book titled Endogenous Growth Theory, co-authored with Howitt, and more recently in The Power of Creative Destruction. In 2019 he received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2015. He was president of the European Economic Association in 2017. He has been an editor of the Annual Review of Economics since 2018.

Other activities

Aghion was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009 and he is a member of the Executive and Supervisory Committee (ESC) of CERGE-EI. He also serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.

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

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. 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.

Additional advisory activities include:

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

Publications

• 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.