Logo forthcoming.
Organizers
Ufuk Akcigit, Arnold C. Harberger Professor of Economics, University of Chicago
Somik Lall, Staff Director of the World Bank’s 2024 World Development Report
Middle-income countries comprise about 75% of the world’s population, 40 percent of global economic activity, 50 percent of the world’s extremely poor, and 60% of global carbon dioxide emissions. And most of those countries are in trouble. During the last decade, the global economy went from healthy to hobbling, and from integrated to fragmented. Foreign trade and investment are constricted by geopolitical tensions, and government policies are restricted by multiple crises and populist pressures. To further complicate matters, climate change concerns put additional pressure on all countries to change their growth strategies.
Given all these challenges, how can middle-income countries expand enterprise, promote human capital, and improve quality of life while also transitioning to cleaner energy sources? These are the motivating questions behind The Growth and Productivity Summer Institute, a new summer institute designed by the Becker Friedman Institute of Economics at UChicago and the World Bank. The Growth and Productivity Summer Institute is geared toward practitioners and policymakers—those who are charged with expanding economic growth and improving the quality of life for all their country’s citizens.
Over two weeks, the first on UChicago’s campus and the second at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., participants will hear from academic and policy experts from around the world on growth policies that are designed specifically for middle-income countries.
During the last three decades, major advances have occurred in our understanding about economic growth, especially regarding middle-income countries, and it is time to put that knowledge to work.
The 2024 Cohort and agenda are forthcoming.
For more information or questions, please contact Alan Golding (agolding@worldbankgroup.org).
Growth and Productivity Summer Institute Faculty
Ufuk Akcigit, Arnold C. Harberger Professor of Economics, University of Chicago
Ufuk Akcigit is a Research Affiliate at the CEPR, a faculty research fellow at NBER and a Distinguished Research Fellow at Koç University. He is the Associate Editor of the Journal of the European Economic Association. In 2016, he won the best Advisor Award in the Department of Economics at UChicago and was winner of the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation in 2017, guaranteeing funding for the next five years. He earned his PhD in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.