The Growth
Academy

The five pillars

The five questions a country has to answer to grow.

Every Academy is built around the same five intellectual pillars, drawn from the World Development Report 2024 and a generation of frontier research.

Pillar 01

Creative destruction, with friction.

Joseph Schumpeter argued that better firms must replace worse ones for an economy to grow. The challenge in middle-income countries is that this replacement breaks down. Incumbent firms with political connections or legacy advantages stay too long. New firms cannot enter. Productivity stalls.

See in our research

ProductivityTimebetter firmsreplace worse onesconnected incumbentsstay too longreplacement resumesAfter Schumpeter, 1942

Pillar 02

The 3i framework: investment, infusion, innovation.

The World Development Report 2024 organizes country growth strategy into three sequential phases. Low-income countries grow primarily through investment in capital and labor. Middle-income countries must add infusion: absorbing foreign technology, ideas, and know-how. To reach high-income status, countries must add innovation: producing new ideas at the frontier. Most countries get stuck because they try to skip the infusion stage.

See in our research

income per capitatimehigh incomemiddle incomelow incomeinvestment+ infusion+ innovationtries to skip to innovationthe middle-income trapsource: World Development Report 2024

Pillar 03

Talent allocation.

Who in a country gets to become an inventor, an entrepreneur, a researcher? The answer determines long-run growth more than almost anything else. We study the family-of-origin effects on inventor outcomes (the Finnish enigma), the global gender distortions index (Goldberg, Yale), and the misallocation of human capital across firms.

When we understand who gets to become an inventor or entrepreneur, we understand something fundamental about a society's capacity to grow.
Akcigit, Koç Medal address, 2025.

See in our research

Equal talent,different starts.DistortionsGender / Family / PlaceOriginsInventionWho invents decides long-run growth

Pillar 04

Energy and the green growth transition.

Middle-income countries cannot decarbonize their economies the way the rich world can. The Academy works on the actual sequencing problem: how do you grow and decarbonize at the same time, when capital is scarce and political windows are short.

From the Academy curriculum

index, base year = 100timeoutputemissionsdecouplingthe window to act

Pillar 05

State capacity, institutions, and political economy of reform.

Every reform in growth policy is also a political reform. The Academy treats institutional quality as a binding constraint, not a footnote. Norman Loayza's Long-Term Growth Model and Asad Alam's productivity work in ECA are recurring teaching texts.

From the Academy curriculum

GDP per capitaTimethe binding constraintreformnext to bind
The University of ChicagoBecker Friedman Institute for EconomicsWorld Bank Group Institute for Economic Development