Someone born in 1600 would find the world of 1800 quite familiar. But someone born in 1800 would find today’s world beyond comprehension. What explains this transformation? The answer is: market capitalism.

Why has market capitalism proved so dynamic? The answer is that it contains within it a powerful engine of change. That is not just economic freedom, though this matters. Nor is it science and technology, though that matters too. It is what the great Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction”.

Philippe Aghion, a professor at the Collège de France and the London School of Economics, has spent a distinguished career bringing Schumpeter’s model into the rigorous theoretical and empirical world of modern economics. In this important book, written with two collaborators, Céline Antonin and Simon Bunel, he brings his work to the wider public.