File:Phillipe Aghion - The State of France (cropped).jpg: Center for the Study of Europe Boston University from Boston, USA derivative work: TeKaBe · CC BY-SA 2.0

Aghion, with Peter Howitt, built the Aghion-Howitt model of economic growth, formalising how new innovations displace old ones — Joseph Schumpeter's idea of "creative destruction" — into a rigorous framework for understanding sustained growth. The two shared half of the 2025 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for that work; Aghion holds chairs at the Collège de France and INSEAD and has also taught at the London School of Economics.