Philippe Mario Aghion FBA (born 17 August 1956) is a French economist who is a professor at the Collège de France, at INSEAD, and at the London School of Economics.^[1] He also teaches at the Paris School of Economics. From 2002 to 2015, he was the Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics at Harvard University.^[1] Prior to that, he was a professor at University College London, an Official Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, and an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.^[1]

Philippe Aghion was born in Paris in 1956, the son of Gaby and Raymond Aghion.^[2][3] He graduated from the mathematics section of the École normale supérieure de Cachan, and obtained a diplôme d'études approfondies (DEA) in mathematical economics from the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. He received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1987.^[4]

His research focuses on economic growth and innovation. With Peter Howitt, he developed the "Schumpeterian paradigm", and extended the paradigm in several directions; much of the resulting work is summarized in his book titled Endogenous Growth Theory, co-authored with Howitt, and more recently in The Power of Creative Destruction. In 2019 he received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics.^[5]

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2015. He was president of the European Economic Association in 2017.^[6] He has been an editor of the Annual Review of Economics since 2018.^[7]

Aghion was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009 and he is a member of the Executive and Supervisory Committee (ESC) of CERGE-EI.^[8][9] He also serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.

Ahead of the 2012 French presidential election, Aghion co-signed an appeal of several economists in support of candidate François Hollande.^[10]

In 2016, Aghion was appointed by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to an expert group advising the High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth, which was co-chaired by presidents François Hollande of France and Jacob Zuma of South Africa.^[11] In 2021, he was appointed to the World Bank–International Monetary Fund High-Level Advisory Group (HLAG) on Sustainable and Inclusive Recovery and Growth, co-chaired by Mari Pangestu, Ceyla Pazarbasioglu, and Nicholas Stern.^[12]

Additional advisory activities include:

• Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education – Economics Institute (CERGE-EI), Member of the Board of Trustees^[13]
• Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional (CREI), Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), Member of the Advisory Board^[14]

• Aghion, Philippe; Antonin, Celine; Bunel, Simon (2021): The Power of Creative Destruction: Economic Upheaval and the Wealth of Nations. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-97116-5.
• Aghion, Philippe; Howitt, Peter (2009); The Economics of Growth. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01263-8
• Aghion, Philippe; Griffith, Rachel (2006). Competition and Growth. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01218-8
• Aghion, Philippe; Durlauf, Steven N. (2005). Handbook of economic growth. 1A. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-52041-8.
• Aghion, Philippe; Durlauf, Steven N. (2005). Handbook of economic growth. 1B. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-52043-2.
• Aghion, Philippe; Howitt, Peter (1998). Endogenous growth theory. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01166-2.