Co-director · Academic frontier
Ufuk Akcigit
Arnold C. Harberger Professor of Economics, The Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics, The University of Chicago. Co-Director, The Growth Academy.
Akcigit was born in Germany to Turkish parents. He took his BA in economics at Koç University in Istanbul in 2003 and his PhD at MIT in 2009 under Daron Acemoglu, the 2024 Nobel laureate. After six years on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the University of Chicago in 2015 and was named the Arnold C. Harberger Professor in 2021.
By the numbers
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- Google Scholar citations
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- papers in the American Economic Review
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- papers in the Journal of Political Economy
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- papers in Econometrica
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- QJE, Review of Economic Studies, JEEA, JME
Selected honors
- 01
Rahmi M. Koç Medal of Science (2025)
Türkiye's most prestigious recognition for scholars of Turkish origin under fifty. Past laureates include his doctoral adviser Daron Acemoglu (2024) and his UChicago colleague Ali Hortaçsu (2021). Akcigit is the first Koç University alumnus to receive the medal.
- 02
Kiel Institute Global Economy Prize (2022)
Awarded by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the City of Kiel, and the Schleswig-Holstein Chamber of Commerce. Past laureates include multiple Nobel laureates.
- 03
Sakıp Sabancı International Research Award, Jury Prize (2022)
Sabancı University. Awarded for work in international economic research.
- 04
Max Planck-Humboldt Research Award (2019)
A 1.5 million euro research grant plus 80,000 euro personal prize from the Max Planck Society and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Akcigit was the first social scientist in the history of the prize to receive it.
Current roles
- Lead Academic, World Development Report 2024 (The Middle-Income Trap).
- Co-Academic Lead, World Development Report 2026 (Artificial Intelligence for Development), with Susan Athey.
- Lead Academic Advisor and Board Member, World Bank Group Institute for Economic Development.
- Member, IMF Managing Director's Advisory Council on Entrepreneurship and Growth.
- Research Associate, NBER (Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship; Economic Fluctuations and Growth).
- Research Affiliate, CEPR.
- Distinguished Research Fellow, Koç University (since 2016).
- Research Professor and Head, Research Group on the Economic Gap between East and West Germany, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
- Associate Editor, Journal of the European Economic Association.
- Co-editor, The Economics of Creative Destruction (Harvard University Press, 2023, foreword by Emmanuel Macron).
Has consulted with the Türkiye Central Bank, the Danish Ministry of Science and Education, the IMF, the World Bank Group, and the Obama administration.
Economic growth is, at its core, the study of how the future happens. When we understand who gets to become an inventor or entrepreneur, we understand something fundamental about a society’s capacity to grow.
