[5] His father, a civil servant, died of cancer when Mokyr was one year old, and so he was raised by his mother in Haifa, Israel.

[4][8][9] He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001, whose biennial Heineken Award for History he received in 2006.

[13] He argues that the root of modernity is in "the emergence of a belief in the usefulness of progress", and that "it was a turning point when intellectuals started to conceive of knowledge as cumulative".

[15] Mokyr presents his explanations for the Industrial Revolution in the 2016 book A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy.

[16] In a review published in Nature, Brad DeLong found that while he favored other explanations for the Industrial Revolution, "I would not be greatly surprised if I were wrong, and Mokyr's brief...turned out to be the most broadly correct analysis...A Culture of Growth is certainly making me rethink.

"[17] Cambridge economic historian Victoria Bateman wrote, "In pointing to growth-boosting factors that go beyond either the state or the market, Mokyr's book is very welcome.

[19] The book has also been reviewed favorably by Diane Coyle,[20] Peer Vries,[21] Mark Koyama,[22] Enrico Spolaore,[23] and The Economist.