ENG
On 28 May 2026, Professor Philippe Mario Aghion was awarded a Charles University honorary doctorate. The 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics laureate has been a member of the CERGE-EI Executive and Supervisory Committee since its inception in 1991. Philippe Mario Aghion received his honorary diploma and medal from the hands of his long-time colleague and the one who invited him to found the CU economics institute, chairman of CERGE-EI Executive and Supervisory Committee Prof. Jan Švejnar.
Tomáš Karásek, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, introduced the honorary degree recipient: “Professor Philippe Aghion belongs to the most distinguished economists of his generation and is one of the leading scholars in the fields of economic growth and innovation. Over the course of his remarkable career, he has made profound contributions to economic thought, particularly through his pioneering work on innovation, competition, institutions, and long-term growth.”
Professor Philippe Mario Aghion (middle) with honorabilis promotor Prof. Jan Švejnar (right).
Professor Philippe Mario Aghion earned his doctoral degrees at Université de Paris I-Pantheon-Sorbonne and Harvard University. He then held positions as Professor of Economics at some of the most prestigious institutions; among other, University College London, Harvard University, Institute of International Economic Studies in Stockholm, Collège de France, London School of Economics and most recently INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. Last year, along with colleague Peter Howitt, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their theory of sustained growth through creative destruction.
The Dean then outlined how Prof. Aghion’s Schumpeterian theory of growth places innovation and creative destruction at the core of economic development. “His research has further illuminated the roles of education, state capacity, and institutional quality in sustaining long-run growth, as well as how competition can act as a powerful stimulus to innovation.” Creative destruction creates conflicts that must be managed in a constructive manner so that innovation will not be blocked. Successful innovators should not limit subsequent competition. We see exactly this in virtually all-powerful global companies such as Google and Amazon, the Dean pointed out. In essence, Professor Aghion’s work “points to a balanced policy agenda: fostering innovation while preserving competition, and combining economic dynamism with social inclusion.”
In his speech, Prof. Aghion recalled the long-time collaboration with CU dating back to 1991 when he, then a researcher at Dortmund University, received a phone call from Jan Švejnar who wanted to create a new institution – CERGE-EI – which would be the first institution in former Socialist economies to teach economics at a cutting-edge level. He praised not only the way CERGE-EI fulfilled its promise to be a world-leading academic institution in economics, but also its students who have been teaching at Harvard, MIT or University College London and the indisputable importance of CERGE-EI for the global job market.
Prof. Aghion’s main advice was that economic transition should be inclusive. “In this process, there are necessary winners and losers in any process, and we should make sure that we care about the losers, too. In similar transition economies that didn’t care about the losers, you got populism – or Brexit. In a sense, globalisation not taking care of the losers led us where we are. You can promote market economy, you can promote entrepreneurship, but you have to make sure that social mobility and competition is possible and that losers are taken care of.”
Aghion maintains that AI, with which comes job disruption and job creation, does promote competition and productivity. But not exactly in the expected sense: “We will need an AI to protect against the abuse of AI. We also need to make sure that the transition between old and new jobs is secure. If we fail to make the AI revolution socially acceptable and inclusive, we will get populism – and we know the cost of populism. Europe needs to wake up and once again be the engine of innovation that it used to be. Remember, the first industrial revolution was in Europe – and Europe was the great innovator.
However, now Europe, according to him, remains stuck in mid-term incremental innovation approaches instead of frontier innovation – and thus since the 1980s has been lagging in innovation behind the U.S. and China. He described current Europe as a “regulatory giant and budgetary dwarf.” Europe, in the name of competition policy, precludes industry policy; Prof. Aghion pointed to the United States’ DARPA competition and industry policy or China’s competition between individual regions and firms. “We need to reconcile innovation with inclusion and preserving and promoting our values, freedom and democracy, the rule of law, and social concern.”
Story: Jan Borek
Photo: Hynek Glos