Trio wins Nobel Prize for economics for their independent but related work on 'creative destruction'

Three academic researchers – Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt – were on Monday awarded the Nobel memorial prize in economics for their studies into the impact of innovation on economic growth and how new technologies replace older ones.

Their work represents a contrasting but complementary approach to economics, according to CNN. 

The economic concept of new technologies replacing older ones is known as "creative destruction."

Mokyr is an economic historian who delved into long-term trends, compared to Howitt and Aghion relied on mathematics to explain how creative destruction works.

The 79-year-old Mokyr is from Northwestern University, in Illinois; Aghion, 69, from the Collège de France and the London School of Economics; and Canadian-born Howitt, 79, is at Brown University, the Ivy League college in Rhode Island, CNN also reports.