Peter Howitt

In a seminal 1992 paper in Econometrica, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt formalized Joseph Schumpeter's concept of creative destruction into a growth model in which successive innovations render previous technologies obsolete. Each innovation generates a quality improvement but simultaneously destroys the monopoly rents of the previous technology leader.

Howitt has held professorships at the University of Western Ontario, Ohio State University, and Brown University, where he served as the Lyn Crost Professor of Social Sciences. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a past president of the Canadian Economics Association.

While Romer's model emphasizes the accumulation of knowledge as a non-rival input that permanently raises productivity, the Aghion-Howitt model centers on the displacement of old technologies by new ones through entrepreneurial innovation and creative destruction. The key distinction is that Schumpeterian growth incorporates obsolescence and the destruction of prior capital as essential drivers of progress.

Howitt co-authored 'Endogenous Growth Theory' (1998) with Philippe Aghion, which became the definitive graduate-level synthesis of the field. He also co-authored a widely used intermediate macroeconomics textbook with Robert Barro, bringing rigorous growth and monetary theory to undergraduate curricula.