The Growth Academy is a 2024 joint initiative between the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute for Economics and the World Bank. It exists to bring frontier research on growth, productivity, and innovation into direct conversation with the policymakers who must act on it. The Chicago Summer Academy is its flagship program, joined by regional editions in partner cities. The Academy also supports the World Development Report, runs the AI for Development roundtable that seeded WDR 2026, and convenes ad hoc country labs on a project basis.
The Growth Academy sits inside the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. It draws on UChicago’s long tradition of growth and development economics, on the Becker Friedman Institute’s network of affiliated faculty, and on the World Bank’s country teams and policy infrastructure.
