Murat Alp Çelik named winner of the Bank of Canada Governor’s Award

March 20, 2023 by Cynthia Macdonald - A&S News

Murat Alp Çelik, assistant professor in the Department of Economics in the Faculty of Arts & Science, has been honoured with a 2023 Bank of Canada Governor’s award.

The award provides financial support to academics who are recognized for their expertise and research in areas important to the bank’s core functions. Çelik’s wide-ranging research interests include macroeconomics, economic growth, innovation, misallocation, inequality, firm dynamics, finance, mergers & acquisitions, and advertising.

He is a respected scholar of macroeconomic theory, which examines, among other topics, the long-term factors that impact economic growth.

“I am greatly honoured to be the recipient of the Governor's Award in recognition of my research on firm and industry dynamics, innovation, and economic growth,” he says.

“My work highlights that the long-term consequences of government policies and the observed structural changes in the macroeconomy can be an order of magnitude more significant than their short-term impact, when their dynamic effects on productivity growth and industrial structure are properly accounted for.

“This award inspires me to work further on the design of optimal dynamic policies that can align private and social incentives in innovation, which can potentially deliver higher growth and welfare for Canadians as well as the rest of the world — while at the same time minimizing negative externalities such as carbon emissions and the impact on climate change.”

Says Ettore Damiano, chair of the Department of Economics: “I am thrilled to congratulate our Bank of Canada Governor’s Award recipient, Professor Murat Alp Çelik. This is an important — and well-deserved — recognition of his work. Murat has established himself as a leading young scholar studying the importance of innovation and firm and industry dynamics on economic growth. And with the recent acceleration in digital technologies adoption, Murat’s work has become particularly important to better understand the Canadian economy in a shifting economic landscape.”

Çelik received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016, and joined the Department of Economics that same year. He has twice been recognized with the Dean’s Excellence Award from the University of Toronto, and is also the past recipient of a Connaught Researcher Award and a Social Sciences and Humanities Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant.