Faculty Directors

John List, Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and the College, Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics, Director, BFI View Bio

Chad Syverson, George C. Tiao Distinguished Service Professor, Booth School of Business, Deputy Director, BFI View Bio

Staff

Kristin Troutman, Program Director Kristin is the Program Director for the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI) Gracias Center for Human Development Incubator and the Kenneth C. Griffin Applied Economics Incubator. In this role, she leads the development and execution of faculty research initiatives that generate innovative ideas to advance academic research and influence policy. Kristin facilitates collaboration among researchers, scholars, and professionals to advance research on timely economic themes. Since joining the University of Chicago in 2010, Kristin has managed and implemented a range of research projects within the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics and the TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health. Prior to joining the University of Chicago, Kristin worked in the education system for over a decade. She earned a BS from Northern Illinois University and a MSW from University of Illinois at Chicago. Over the years, she has found personal fulfillment in contributing to meaningful research that seeks to create lasting, positive change in the world. Read More+Show Less-

About

The University of Chicago Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI) is proud to launch the Gracias Center for Human Sciences and Well-Being, established through a transformational gift from the Gracias Family Foundation. By focusing on both beliefs and scaling, the Center will deepen understanding of human development, well-being, and the drivers of positive outcomes worldwide.

The Center will ask rigorous questions about beliefs: How can we measure them? How do they change? Where are they biased? And why do they matter? Equally, it will address the challenge of scaling: Which ideas succeed at scale? Why do some fail? And how can proven solutions reach more people?

The Gracias Center builds on BFI’s tradition of supporting and advancing frontier economic research and sharing world-changing ideas to help inform pressing challenges of the day. Using the innovative research model developed by the Kenneth C. Griffin Applied Economics Incubator, the Center will accelerate data-driven discoveries that lead to meaningful improvements in human flourishing and mobility.

“This generous gift from the Gracias Family Foundation will allow us to expand the innovative research model developed by the Kenneth C. Griffin Applied Economics Incubator, which focuses resources on one critical issue at a time, thus accelerating actionable, data-driven solutions to the most pressing societal challenges.”

John List, Director, BFI

Supporting the Faculty Directors and leading the development and execution of faculty research initiatives to generate innovative ideas to advance academic research and influence policy is the Center’s Program Director, Kristin Troutman. For more than a decade, Kristin has managed and implemented a range of UChicago research projects at the intersection of economics and education. She earned a BS from Northern Illinois University and a MSW from University of Illinois at Chicago, and also served as a school social worker prior to joining UChicago. In addition to her responsibilities in support of the Gracias Center, Kristin continues to support the Department of Economics as the Program Director of the Kenneth C. Griffin Applied Economics Incubator.

Current Research

Catalyzing Global Science on Caregivers’ Beliefs and Child Development

BFI has begun the first set of core activities of the Center in collaboration with the TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health. This work will advance groundbreaking research on how caregiver beliefs shape child development.

Research has consistently shown that what caregivers know and believe about child development profoundly impacts how they interact with children. These engagement patterns, in turn, directly influence children’s cognitive, linguistic, and social-emotional outcomes. To measure these critical beliefs, the TMW Center developed the Survey of Parent/Provider Expectations and Knowledge (SPEAK), a computer-adaptive tool that efficiently and accurately assesses caregiver knowledge across five domains: language and literacy, socioemotional development, STEM learning, child-technology interaction, and dual language learning.

The research supported by the Gracias Center will provide critical infrastructure for translation and cultural adaptation of the SPEAK, enhance the platform for broader scalability, fund data collection across diverse populations, and convene collaborative conferences to build a global research community. The goal is to generate cross-cultural evidence on caregiver beliefs, embed the SPEAK within studies across economics, psychology, education, and public policy, and assess how emerging technologies like AI align with developmental science. This work will advance the science of early skill formation, inform intervention design and policy, and provide insights into reducing human capital disparities worldwide.

Interest in this research has already extended globally, with organizations including the Ministry of Economy and Planning in Saudi Arabia, the Cleveland Clinic Akron General, the University of Colorado Children’s Hospital, the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood, Head Start programs, and various U.S. nonprofits expressing interest in leveraging the SPEAK to assess caregiver beliefs and measure knowledge change across cultural contexts.

Inaugural Call for Proposals

In Fall 2025, the Gracias Center for Human Sciences and Well-Being issued its inaugural call for proposals to fund UChicago ladder faculty studying beliefs and scaling.

Together, the Center will work with BFI scholars to find the small shifts in beliefs that lead to big shifts in behavior, as well as shed light on the processes necessary for successful interventions to scale to the point of affecting policy and culture.

This inaugural incubator invited bold thinkers to reimagine how we shape the future through interdisciplinary research on how beliefs can unlock human potential, and how to maximize the positive impact of the most promising interventions science can identify — saving and improving lives, building and strengthening communities, and enabling us all to rise to the challenges we face.

Recipients of the inaugural call will be announced in the coming months.

Related

UChicago News: $20 million gift from Gracias Family Foundation to support UChicago research and student advancement