The Curious Engineer

All blogs / Society / politics / economy

Paul Romer

paulromer.net

Economist. Policy Entrepreneur. Geek. Co-recipient of the 2018 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. University Professor at NYU. Focused on urbanization; cooperation at scale of millions and billions; science; technology; economic development; long-term growth; cod

Society / politics / economyEssays / personalTech news / industry

’00’05’10’15’20’25
Posts
190 from 21 Jan 1997 to 13 Sep 2026
Posting
now and then (3 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://paulromer.net/index.xml

2026 3

  1. 2026 Nobel Prizes for Hall and Woodford
  2. Research Misconduct of AI Companies
  3. Sam Altman Leads with the Lie

2025 3

  1. I Suspect that Xi is Not Worried
  2. A Harsh Lesson About the World of Tech
  3. Base-Rate Blindness

2024 5

  1. Harris’s Agenda is Vastly Better for the U.S. Economy
  2. Environment as Code
  3. Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS
  4. Inflation is About 2.8% and Still Falling
  5. Public Key for Paul M. Romer

2023 15

  1. News from TPFKAT (The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter)
  2. It Would be Crazy to Raise Rates
  3. Seasonality Matters for Inflation
  4. Flying by the Seat Powell's Pants?
  5. Even More Good News about Inflation
  6. McCarthy's Plan
  7. Bad News About Inflation
  8. Juice the Profits
  9. Cockpit Insecurity
  10. If your AI is so great at coding, why is your software so buggy?
  11. Lazy Looting
  12. Looting, Silicon Valley Edition
  13. Inflation Is Still Down ... But By Less
  14. Still Looks Like Inflation Decreased
  15. More Good News on Inflation

2022 5

  1. Good News on Inflation
  2. EA, FTX, and SBF
  3. Looting as the Endgame of the Entirely Predictable Crypto Collapse
  4. Inflation, Employment, and Wages in the Current Recovery
  5. Theories, Facts, and Lisa Cook

2021 9

  1. The Growth-Severity Confound
  2. Recent Timeline for the Doing Business Scandal
  3. Political Overreach, Diminished Credibility
  4. Dice, Walls and Boosters
  5. Burden-of-Proof Games
  6. Infrequent Events and Proxy Indicators
  7. The Risk of Infection is the Canary in the Coal Mine
  8. The Implicit Bias of Vaccine Effectiveness
  9. Protecting Democracy from Unchecked Political Power

2020 15

  1. My email to Scott Atlas
  2. Statement for House Budget Committee Hearing on Federal R&D.
  3. The Most Important Policy Decision In Our Lifetimes
  4. FAQs on Virus Tests In Schools
  5. The True Cost of a Virus Test is $10 not $100
  6. The American Academy of Pediatrics Challenges CDC Guidance on Schools
  7. The FDA's Perpetual Process Machine
  8. US Pandemic Update: June 2020
  9. $11 billion for Testing by States Could Run Out in 8 Days
  10. If Virus Tests Were Sodas
  11. Roadmap to Responsibly Reopen America
  12. Even A Bad Test Can Help Guide the Decision to Isolate: Covid Simulations Part 3
  13. Simulating Covid-19: Part 2
  14. Simulating Covid-19: Part 1
  15. What Went Wrong

2019 6

  1. FAQs on Targeted Digital Ad Tax
  2. FT Op-Ed: Recommendations for World Bank
  3. Contact Info and Public Key
  4. Thank You
  5. Nobel Lecture: On the possibility of progress
  6. The Deep Structure of Economic Growth

2018 6

  1. Conditional Optimism
  2. There is more to the Gender Gap than the Partisan Divide
  3. Jupyter, Mathematica, and the Future of the Research Paper
  4. My Email Quoted by the Financial Times
  5. My Unclear Comments about the Doing Business Report
  6. Doing Business — Updated 1-16

2017 3

  1. Clear and Precise Scientific Communication
  2. Congratulations to Dick Thaler on Winning the Nobel Prize!
  3. Romer Slaughters Kittens

2016 16

  1. Nobel Noise
  2. Possible Responses to the Refugee Crisis
  3. Letter from an Aspiring Macroeconomist (with response)
  4. Trouble with Macroeconomics, Update
  5. The Trouble With Macroeconomics
  6. Why It Makes Sense for an M.D. to Lead the World Bank
  7. Everybody wants progress; nobody wants change
  8. Abstraction vs. Radical Specificity
  9. Professionalism and the Academic Division of Labor
  10. Blogging and Tweeting
  11. My New Position as Chief Economist at the World Bank
  12. The Deep Structure of Economic Growth
  13. Martha Derthick and Policymaking for Social Security
  14. Header Images
  15. Press
  16. Intellectual History

2015 46

  1. Where has all the excludability gone?
  2. Speeding Up: Theory
  3. Speeding-up and Missed Opportunities: Evidence
  4. Science Really Works: A Prize for A Careful Optimist
  5. Clear Writing Produces Clearer Thoughts
  6. Human Capital and Knowledge
  7. Nonrival Goods After 25 Years
  8. Let them come and they will build it
  9. Botox for Development
  10. The Transcendent Differences of Politics
  11. An Indicator of Tribalism in Macroeconomics
  12. Research Meso-Tasks
  13. The Clinical-Bench Science Distinction in Macro
  14. Making Room for Whom?
  15. Urban Expansion in Colombia
  16. Reactions to Solow's Choice
  17. Solow's Choice
  18. What Went Wrong in Macro - Historical Details
  19. What Went Wrong in Macro - Overview
  20. Stigler Conviction vs. Feynman Integrity
  21. Feynman Integrity
  22. Freshwater Feedback Part 1: "Everybody does it"
  23. IoT, nsurlsessiond, and Trust
  24. Using Math to Obfuscate -- Observations from Finance
  25. Why Information Grows
  26. The Norms of Politics: Ferguson and Ehrlich
  27. Recapping: Science, Politics, and Mathiness
  28. The Assumptions in Growth Theory
  29. Reactions to "Denialism"
  30. Euler's Theorem Denialism
  31. Why the Mathiness in Lucas (2009) Matters
  32. Illustrating Mathiness - Code Analogy
  33. Talkin' bout a revolution
  34. Needs More Math Needs More Cowbell
  35. Valid criticism of things I've written about mathiness
  36. Mathiness and Academic Identity
  37. It's not nice to fool your colleagues
  38. Physics versus Math
  39. Protecting the Norms of Science in Economics
  40. Ed Prescott is No Robert Solow, No Gary Becker
  41. Lucas on blueprints as physical capital
  42. My Paper "Mathiness in the Theory of Economic Growth"
  43. Urbanization Passes the Pritchett Test
  44. The Rise and Decline of Science
  45. Interview on Urbanization, Charter Cities and Growth Theory
  46. Re: NYTimes and Missing Black Men

2014 5

  1. The Challenge of the City: Paul Romer, Richard Florida and Robert Sampson
  2. Conversations on Urbanization: Paul Romer and Ed Glaeser
  3. Conversations on Urbanization: Mark Kleiman & Paul Romer
  4. The Great Crime Wave & the Tragedy of Mass Incarceration
  5. Urbanization as Opportunity

2013 14

  1. Unlocking Land Values for Infrastructure in Ahmedabad
  2. Conversations on Urbanization: Paul Romer and Bill Bratton
  3. Charter Cities: New Cities. More Choices. Better Rules.
  4. The NYU Stern Urbanization Project
  5. Housing in China: Large vs Small Cities
  6. Is Detroit Denser than Denver?
  7. Small Stakes, Good Measurement
  8. Urbanization versus GDP per Capita
  9. Alternative Narratives about Chinese Urbanization
  10. Trimming the Lower Tail – TLT
  11. Conversations on Urbanization: Paul Romer and David Miller
  12. Why I Wouldn’t Live in a Privately Run City
  13. The City as Unit of Analysis
  14. Conversations on Urbanization: Enrique Penalosa and Paul Romer

2012 6

  1. "The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers" [Foreign Policy]
  2. Federating Up Versus Devolving Down
  3. "Charter Cities: Unchartered Territory" [The Economist]
  4. Honduras Update
  5. "Can Importing Well-Run Cities...Lift the World From Poverty?" [FC]
  6. "Who Wants to Buy Honduras?" [The New York Times Magazine]

2011 7

  1. VIDEO: "Paul Romer ZURICH.MINDS" [Zurich Minds]
  2. Glass House Conversations: The Case for New Cities
  3. "N.Y.U. Lands Top Economist for Cities Project" [NYT]
  4. VIDEO: "The World's First Charter City?" [TED]
  5. "Future Cities Need to Hand Over the Keys" [CFR]
  6. "The Quest for a 'Charter City'" [The Wall Street Journal]
  7. A New City in Honduras

2010 8

  1. Justice Has Been Delayed and Denied For Too Long
  2. Défense D’Uriner
  3. Lübeck as the First Charter City
  4. "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty" [The Atlantic]
  5. "Paul Romer's Bold New Idea for Charter Cities" [CGD]
  6. In the City
  7. Enfranchising the Jamaican Diaspora
  8. Charter Cities Versus Humanitarian Military Occupation

2009 15

  1. Meta-Rules: Base Realignment and Closure Commission
  2. Rules and Culture: Corruption in Hong Kong
  3. Skyhooks versus Cranes: The Nobel Prize For Elinor Ostrom
  4. New Systems Versus Evolution
  5. Which City Charter Was Established by Treaty in 1984?
  6. How Many Charter Cities Can Succeed?
  7. Fish Proverb v2.0 (Continued)
  8. "High Five with Paul Romer" [Forbes]
  9. Why Isn't Investment Already Taking Place?
  10. Rules Change: North vs. South Korea
  11. Fish Proverb v2.0 (Bringing in Rules)
  12. A Charter City in Cuba?
  13. Map Showing the World's Lights At Night
  14. Why the World Needs Charter Cities
  15. A Theory of History, With An Application

2006 1

  1. "The Growth of Growth Theory" [The Economist]

1997 2

  1. "TIME's 25 Most Influential Americans" [TIME Magazine]
  2. "For Economist Paul Romer, Prosperity Depends on Ideas" [WSJ]