News

Nobel Prize winner lives here

Peter Howitt

By Bill Moss, Published: October 16, 2025

Designed by the renowned golf course architect Tom Fazio, Champion Hills is home to business leaders from well-known corporations across the U.S. Now, the upscale development on lush rolling ridges can point to a most remarkable achievement of a homeowner: Nobel Prize.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Tuesday awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences to Peter W. Howitt for his work on the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction — what happens when a new innovative product displaces an older product in the market.

A professor emeritus of economics at Brown University, Dr. Howitt shares the award with Philippe Aghion of the Collège de France and INSEAD in Paris and the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom, and Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University.

Howitt, 79, earned a bachelor's degree from McGill University in 1968, a master's degree from the University of Western Ontario in 1969 and a doctorate from Northwestern University in 1973.

Henderson County tax records show that Howitt owns a townhome and a lot in Champion Hills.

Awakened at his home in Hendersonville, Howitt reacted to the news. "Well, you know, I knew this was a possibility. I thought a fairly remote possibility, but, I’m not one of these people that keeps the phone on and the champagne in the fridge," he said. "I’m not sure we have any champagne at home."

“My future,” he told the Nobel interviewer, “is going to involve more economics, and less golf, than I had anticipated!”

Here is the Royal Swedish Academy's news release on the Nobel award for economics:

Technology advances rapidly and affects us all, with new products and production methods replacing old ones in a never-ending cycle. This is the basis for sustained economic growth, which results in a better standard of living, health and quality of life for people around the globe.

However, this was not always the case. Quite the opposite: Stagnation was the norm throughout most of human history. Despite important discoveries now and again, which sometimes led to improved living conditions and higher incomes, growth always eventually levelled off.

Joel Mokyr used historical sources as one means to uncover the causes of sustained growth becoming the new normal. He demonstrated that if innovations are to succeed one another in a self-generating process, we not only need to know that something works, but we also need to have scientific explanations for why. The latter was often lacking prior to the industrial revolution, which made it difficult to build upon new discoveries and inventions. He also emphasised the importance of society being open to new ideas and allowing change.

Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt also studied the mechanisms behind sustained growth. In an article from 1992, they constructed a mathematical model for what is called creative destruction: when a new and better product enters the market, the companies selling the older products lose out. The innovation represents something new and is thus creative. However, it is also destructive, as the company whose technology becomes passé is outcompeted.

In different ways, the laureates show how creative destruction creates conflicts that must be managed in a constructive manner. Otherwise, innovation will be blocked by established companies and interest groups that risk being put at a disadvantage.

“The laureates’ work shows that economic growth cannot be taken for granted. We must uphold the mechanisms that underly creative destruction, so that we do not fall back into stagnation,” says John Hassler, chair of the Committee for the prize in economic sciences.