Ufuk Akcigit

As of 2021, he holds Research Associate positions at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Center for Economic Policy Research, Brookings Institute, Halle Institute, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis, and CESifo. In 2016, he was named Distinguished Research Fellow by Koc University where he completed his undergraduate studies.

In 2021, he was named Econometric Society Fellow and John Simon Guggenheim Fellow. In 2022, he received the prestigious Global Economy Prize in Economics from the Kiel Institute in Germany and the Sakıp Sabancı International Research Award.

After his doctoral studies, Akcigit started working as an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2015, he moved to the University of Chicago as an assistant professor, got promoted to Associate Professor in 2018 and finally to a full Professor in 2019. He is the Arnold C. Harberger Professor since 2020. He recently founded and is running a research group in Chicago that uses large-scale firm and individual level micro datasets to uncover how talent allocation, human capital, industrial policies, competitive landscape, academia, and institutions influence economic growth through innovation and ideas. As winner of the Max Planck-Humboldt Research Award, he also has a dedicated research team in Germany that focuses on the Economic Gap between East and West Germany.

Ufuk Akcigit was born to Turkish parents in Germany. He moved back to his hometown Bursa, with his parents when he was four-years old. He earned his middle and high education degrees from Ankara Anatolian High School. He was interested in Mathematics and Economics from an early age. In 2003, he obtained his bachelor's degree in economics from Koç University. Upon graduation, he completed his doctoral studies and earned a Ph.D. degree with his thesis on Industrial Policy and Economic Growth, from MIT in 2009.

Ufuk Akcigit (born 23 May 1980) is a Turkish economist. He is the Arnold C. Harberger Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics since 2019. The same year, he also received the Max Planck-Humboldt Research Award for his achievements in the field of macroeconomics. In 2021, he was named John Simon Guggenheim Fellow and Econometric Society fellow for his work in Economics. In 2022, he received the prestigious Global Economy Prize in Economics from the Kiel Institute in Germany and the Sakıp Sabancı International Research Award.