Five Immigrants To America Won 2024 And 2025 Nobel Prize In Economics

In a remarkable achievement, five immigrants to America have been awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2024 and 2025; four of the five were former international students. In 2025, three of the six U.S. winners in the Nobel Prize science categories immigrated to the United States. The awards highlight the continued contributions made by immigrants, even as the Trump administration has enacted or proposed new immigration restrictions on H-1B visa holders, employment-based immigrants, international students and others.

The 2025 Immigrant Nobel Prize Winners In Economics

Joel Mokyr, an immigrant to America born in the Netherlands, was awarded half of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences “for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress.” The other half of the award was given “for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction” to Peter Howitt, an immigrant to the United States from Canada and a professor at Brown University, and Philippe Aghion, born in France, who is affiliated with the Collège de France and INSEAD, Paris, France and the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom.

Immigrants have been awarded 33% of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in economics, including 31% since 2000, according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis. Aghion, like Mokyr and Howitt, was also an international student in the United States, earning a Ph.D. at Harvard University. He is not listed as an immigrant in the NFAP research for purposes of identifying U.S. Nobel Prize winners. However, it is likely that he received a green card since his CV lists Aghion as a professor at Harvard from 2000 to 2015, and he was also a professor at MIT. At a minimum, Philippe Aghion contributed to American economic research and teaching for approximately two decades.

Since the beginning of the 20th century and over the past 25 years, immigrants have excelled in scientific fields. “Immigrants have been awarded 40% of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in chemistry, medicine and physics since 2000,” according to an NFAP analysis. Between 1901 and 2025, immigrants have been awarded 36% of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in chemistry, medicine and physics, according to NFAP’s research.

In 2024, three immigrants to America won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. “This year’s laureates in the economic sciences—Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson—have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity,” according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Acemoglu immigrated from Turkey, and Johnson and Robinson immigrated from the United Kingdom. Johnson and Robinson were international students in the United States.

Joel Mokyr’s Immigrant Story And Optimistic Economic Outlook

Joel Mokyr was born in the Netherlands. “The darkness of Mr. Mokyr’s family history contrasts with his optimism for the future,” reported the Wall Street Journal in a 2024 article about economic debates. “His parents were Dutch Jews who survived the Holocaust. His father, a civil servant, died of cancer when Mr. Mokyr was a year old. He was raised by his mother in a small apartment in the port city of Haifa in Israel.” Mokyr said, “My mother was not an optimist. She had lived a very tough life.”

Mokyr received a B.A. in economics and history from Hebrew University of Jerusalem before coming to the United States as an international student. He was an instructor at Yale for a year before becoming an economics professor at Northwestern University, where he continues to teach and conduct research.

“The drivers of technological progress and eventually economic performance were attitude and aptitude,” wrote Mokyr in his book A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy, which examines Europe from 1500 to 1700. “The former set the willingness and energy with which people try to understand the natural world around them; the latter determines their success in turning such knowledge into higher productivity and living standards.”

Mokyr disagrees with those who argue that human beings have invented almost all that will be invented, and economic progress will therefore stall. “I think the rate of innovation is just getting faster and faster,” Mokyr told the Wall Street Journal.

“One of the main missions I have in life is to point out to my students how lucky they are to be born in the 20th century,” he said. “Compared to what life was like 100 or 200 years ago, we’re incredibly fortunate.”

Economist Mark Regets, an NFAP senior fellow, notes that economics has shifted from focusing solely on labor and capital to the significance of innovation and technology in fostering growth. “The winners of the 2025 Nobel Prize have furthered our understanding of the role that innovation and technology play in economic growth and improved living standards.”

Analysts note that recent Nobel Prize announcements highlight the significant role played by immigration laws and regulations. Five of the six Nobel Prize winners in economics came to America as international students. Mokyr might not have earned his Ph.D. in economics at Yale in the United States if the rule proposed by the Trump administration had been in place limiting international students to fixed admission periods. He first earned a master’s degree and would have needed to receive government approval from the Department of Homeland Security to continue his studies for a Ph.D. or to have completed his program within four years under the DHS student rules proposed in August.

Daron Acemoglu came to America from Turkey in 1993 to be a professor at MIT and shared the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2024. If MIT had to pay a $100,000 fee to sponsor his H-1B visa, now required under a September 2025 presidential proclamation for new H-1B visa holders outside the United States, the university is unlikely to have hired Acemoglu.

The Wall Street Journal, commenting on immigrant Nobel Prize winners, editorialized, “Anecdotes matter because the contributions of individuals matter.” The 2025 Nobel Prize winners illustrate this point through their life stories and research. Their research shows that innovation originates from the actions and acquired knowledge of individuals, and individuals are more likely to innovate under the right conditions within a country.

In a 1994 article with Joseph Ferrie, Joel Mokyr wrote about the role of individual immigrant entrepreneurs. “The immigrant entrepreneur is ubiquitous in the U.S. of the 1990s,” according to Ferrie and Mokyr. They cited the example of Subramonian Shankar, an Indian immigrant who founded a company in America with sales of $570 million and employed 130 workers. “Though only a handful have enjoyed the success of a Subramonian Shankar, a majority of Americans view immigrants as hard-working, enterprising additions to the U.S. economy.”