Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt won the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics Monday for their research into the impact of innovation on economic growth and how new technologies replace older ones, a key economic concept known as “creative destruction”.

Mokyr, an economic historian, delved into long-term trends using historical sources, while Howitt and Aghion relied on mathematics to explain how creative destruction works. Dutch-born Mokyr, 79, is from Northwestern University; Aghion, 69, from Collège de France and London School of Economics; and Canadian-born Howitt, 79, from Brown University.