Ufuk Akcigit is the Arnold C. Harberger Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Growth Academy at the University of Chicago. He is widely recognized for his research on economic growth, innovation, and firm dynamics, and he is regularly consulted by major international institutions on these topics.

He currently serves as the Lead Academic for the World Development Report 2024, which examines the middle-income trap, and for the forthcoming World Development Report 2026 on AI and development. He is also a Lead Academic Advisor and Board Member of the World Bank’s Institute for Economic Development, and a member of the IMF Managing Director’s Advisory Council on Entrepreneurship and Growth.

His contributions have been recognized with several major honors, including the Rahmi M. Koç Medal of Science (2025), the Max Planck–Humboldt Research Award (2021), the Kiel Institute Global Economy Prize (2022), and the National Science Foundation CAREER Research Award (2015), among several others. He is also a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and an elected member of the Turkish Science Academy.

Akcigit’s research has appeared in leading journals, shaping current thinking on productivity, innovation policy, economic mobility, and cross-country growth. He earned his PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009. Before joining the University of Chicago, he was on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania.

At Chicago since 2015