Finance Webinar（2020-18)

Topic: Tapping into Talent: Coupling Education and Innovation Policies for Economic Growth

Speaker: Ufuk Akcigit, University of Chicago

Time: Wednesday, 28 October,16:30-18:00 Beijing Time

Location: Microsoft Teams Online conference room

Abstract:

How do innovation and education policy affect individual career choice and aggregate productivity? This paper analyzes the various layers that connect R&D subsidies and higher education policy to productivity growth. We put the development of scarce talent and career choice at the center of a new endogenous growth framework with individual-level heterogeneity in talent, frictions, and preferences. We link the model to micro-level data from Denmark and uncover a host of facts about the links between talent, higher education, and innovation. We use these facts to calibrate the model and study counterfactual policy exercises. We find that R&D subsidies, while less effective than standard models, can be strengthened when combined with higher education policy that alleviates financial frictions for talented youth. Education and innovation policies not only alleviate different frictions, but also impact innovation at different time horizons. Education policy is also more effective in societies with high income inequality.

Introduction:

Ufuk Akcigit is Arnold C. Harberger Professor of Economics at theUniversity of Chicago. As a macroeconomist, his research centers on economic growth, productivity, firm dynamics and economics of innovation. Akcigit was an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania from 2009 to 2015, and at the University of Chicago from 2015 to 2018. From 2018 to 2019, he was an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago. In addition, he serves as a Faculty Research Fellow in the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Research Affiliate in the Center for Economic Policy Research, a Distinguished Research Fellow at Koc University, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Brookings Institute and Rimini Center for Economic Analysis.

Akcigit received his BSc in economics from Koc University in Istanbul. He then went on to earn his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009.

//www.ufukakcigit.com

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