The annual Harris Policy Innovation Challenge, first launched in the 2023-2024 academic year, offers graduate students across the University of Chicago an opportunity to apply their knowledge, insights, and skills to a complex, multi-faceted, contemporary public policy problem of local consequence. Student teams learn about the issue from authoritative voices across the Chicago business, government, and civic communities and submit evidence- and analysis-informed policy proposals to expert judges. The winning team is awarded a monetary prize of $10,000.
This academic year, the Harris Policy Innovation Challenge is focused on creating a thriving downtown for Chicago. Partnering with the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation, the contest will, like the inaugural opportunity to address the local pension deficit, tackle an urgent problem of local significance.
In the four years since the COVID-19 pandemic forever changed how Americans work, urban downtowns have struggled to regain their former energy and economic power. Amid efforts to transform scores of now-vacant office buildings and combat crime, U.S. cities have yet to crack the code on how best to lure back business and tourism dollars.
The 2024-25 Harris Policy Innovation Challenge will focus on an urgent local issue: What can Chicago do over the next three years to create a thriving downtown for the next twenty years?
Graduate students interested in various policy areas, including economic development, affordable housing, crime, municipal finance, and urban policy, are encouraged to participate.
Students will be asked to create solutions to address three key outcomes, namely:
At the end of the challenge in the spring of 2025, a panel of experts will select three teams as finalists.
A closing event will follow in April 2025, to which members of the press, policymakers, and the community will be invited to watch the finalists present their proposals to the expert panel, which will select a winner based on:
A $10,000 award will be given to the team with the most compelling and promising policy proposal.
Justin Marlowe is a Research Professor in the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. His research and teaching are focused on public finance, with emphasis on public capital markets, infrastructure finance, state and local budgeting, and financial disclosure. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Public Budgeting & Finance.
Dr. Marlowe has authored or edited four books – including the first open-access textbook on public financial management – and more than 50 academic articles and book chapters. He is also an admitted expert witness in federal and state courts, and has served on technical advisory bodies for the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, the Government Finance Officers Association, the National Academies of Science, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, several state and local governments, and many other public, private, and non-profit organizations.
Dr. Marlowe received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and is a Certified Government Financial Manager. In 2018 he was elected to the National Academy of Public Administration. He also serves as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Digital Government. Prior to joining Harris, he was on the faculty at the University of Washington and the University of Kansas.
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