Results for “paul romer”
134 found

New Videos: Leading Thinkers on Development

At MRUniversity we just released over 30 new videos on leading thinkers on development. We cover Amartya Sen (who gets three), Bela BelassaKarl Polanyi, Adam Smith, Paul Romer, William Easterly and many others. In terms of  the course these videos are optional, they are for dipping into as per one’s interest. In these videos, we sometimes provide a second perspective on issues we discuss in greater detail in forthcoming topic videos.

On Monday we will be releasing a new section of the Development Economics course, Food and Agricultural Productivity.

Assorted links

1. IMF podcast for An Economist Gets Lunch.

2. Finland may be the first out of the eurozone after all.

3. Winning and leading submissions for the Wolfson Prize on leaving the euro.

4. Update on Austro-Chinese business cycle theory, funny about that excess capacity isn’t it?

5. Summary coverage of the LIBOR scandal, from The Economist.

6. Arnold Kling on the economics of PEPCO.

7. New urbanization blog by Paul Romer and Brandon Fuller.

8. Josh Barro is completely correct and many commentators on my original post failed a reading test.

The World Needs More Canada

Exceeding all expectations, Paul Romer convinced the Honduran government to authorize a charter city. Now Romer is encouraging Canada to export its institutions. Here is Romer and Octavio Sanchez, chief of staff to the President of Honduras, writing in Canada’s most important newspaper, The Globe and Mail:

Crossed-Flag-Pins Honduras Canada
http://www.crossed-flag-pins.com

With the near unanimous support of its Congress, Honduras recently defined a new legal entity: la Región Especial de Desarrollo. A RED is an independent reform zone intended to offer jobs and safety to families who lack a good alternative; officials in the RED will be able to partner with foreign governments in critical areas such as policing, jurisprudence and transparency. By participating, Canada can lead an innovative approach to development assistance, an approach that tackles the primary roadblock to prosperity in the developing world: weak governance.

…According to Gallup, the number of adults worldwide who would move permanently to Canada if given the chance is about 45 million. Although Canada can’t accommodate everyone who’d like to move here, it can help to bring stronger governance to many new places that could accept millions of new residents. The RED in Honduras is the place to start.

…By participating in RED governance, Canada can make the new city a more attractive place for would-be residents and investors.

…The courts in the RED will be independent from those in the rest of Honduras. The Mauritian Supreme Court [!, AT]  has agreed in principle to serve as a court of final appeal for the RED, but Canada can play a strong complementary role. Because the RED can appoint judges from foreign jurisdictions, Canadian justices could hear RED cases from Canada and help train local jurists.

Oversight, policing and jurisprudence are just a few of the ways in which Canada can help.

…The world does not need more aid. As the Gallup numbers show, it needs more Canada – more of the norms and know-how that lead to the rule of law, true inclusion and real opportunity for all.

Paul Romer is on an incredible run.

Will there be a charter city in Honduras?

Paul Romer hopes so, here is an update:

Much will depend on the transparency commission. The first batch of members appointed this week comprise George Akerlof, another economist and Nobel laureate; Nancy Birdsall, formerly at the Inter-American Development Bank, who now runs the Centre for Global Development, a think-tank; Ong Boon Hwee, a former senior executive at Temasek Holdings and Singapore Power; and Harry Strachan, an investor who used to run INCAE, a leading Latin American business school, with Mr Romer himself in the chair.

The article is interesting throughout, the pointer is from Michael Clemens.

Launching the Innovation Renaissance

Launching the Innovation Renaissance (Amzn link, B&N for Nook, also iTunes) my new e-book from TED books is now available!  How can we increase innovation? I look at patents, prizes, education, immigration, regulation, trade and other levers of innovation policy. Here’s a brief description:

Unemployment, fear, and fitful growth tell us that the economy is stagnating. The recession, however, is just the tip of iceberg. We have deeper problems. Most importantly, the rate of innovation is down. Patents, which were designed to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, have instead become weapons in a war for competitive advantage with innovation as collateral damage. College, once a foundation for innovation, has been oversold. We have more students in college than ever before, for example, but fewer science majors. Regulations, passed with the best of intentions, have spread like kudzu and now impede progress to everyone’s detriment. Launching the Innovation Renaissance is a fast-paced look at the levers of innovation policy that explains why innovation has slowed and how we can accelerate innovation and build a 21st century economy.

Here is a blurb from Paul Romer (NYU):

Progress comes from improvements in both our technologies and our rules. Alex Tabarrok makes a compelling case that in the United States, our rules on patents, education, and immigration are holding us back. If you want to think clearly about policies that matter for growth, turn off the TV, stop surfing the web, and read this book!

I discuss prizes and education in Launching and so was especially pleased to get this endorsement from Tom Vander Ark, formerly the president of the X PRIZE Foundation and the Executive Director of Education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and now CEO of Open Education Solutions.

If you’re a fan of MarginalRevolution like I am, you’ll want to read Tabarrok’s latest book. If you’re interested in innovation like I am, you need to read Launching the Innovation Renaissance. Alex poses thought experiments from patents to prizes, from health to education to immigration. He skewers Soviet-style employment bargains and offers insightful alternatives to improve our educational system. Alex is occasionally snarky, often witty, always incisive. Read this on your next flight.

FYI, I began this book before I read a draft of Tyler’s book The Great Stagnation and was interested to see that although we share a few common themes that perhaps due to differences in personality Tyler focuses on describing problems while I am more excited to promote solutions!

Which intellectuals have influence?

Ben Casnocha suggested to me that I have harsh standards.  I don’t mean “influencing lots of other minds,” I mean changing the world.  Here are a few intellectuals who have had real influence:

1. Jane Jacobs: City planners heed her strictures in many different locales, sometimes too much.

2. Rachel Carson, and numerous environmentalists: Obvious.

3. Milton Friedman: He inspired market-oriented reformers around the world, eased the way to floating exchange rates, helped legitimize early derivatives, and focused attention on monetary policy and away from fiscal policy, among other achievements.

What about today?

1. Peter Singer: Many fewer people eat meat and he has given the animal rights movement greater intellectual credibility.

2. Muhammad Yunnus: He popularized micro-credit and spread the notion to many countries, even though he is by no means its inventor.

3. Richard Posner: Many more judges use economic concepts when issuing judgments or writing up opinions.

Most of the people in this category have spent a big chunk of their lives pushing a single, fairly specific issue or method.  You could add Bernanke (a special case, but still a yes), Charles Murray on poverty, and Germaine Greer.  Art Laffer maybe.  Friedman is a throwback to the time when generalists could be quite influential.

Who hasn’t had much influence over events?  I would cite Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, Slavoj Žižek, Christopher Hitchens, Paul Krugman, Tony Judt, Noam Chomsky, Francis Fukuyama, Charles Taylor, Steven Pinker, Naomi Klein, and Niall Ferguson, among many others including virtually all economists.

Perhaps these individuals will have long-run influence on people’s broader views, and thus on longer-run events, but I wonder.  Not everything feeds into a long and powerful stream, and every now and then there is a reset.  We do not know, but we do know that some very focused individuals have had real influence.

I would put Esther Duflo, Jeffrey Sachs, Paul Romer, and Jacob Hacker (public option) in the “still have a good chance to have a big influence” category.

There is also the “futile crusaders” category, for instance Thomas Friedman for pushing for a centrist movement for green energy and Larry Lessig for IP reform and campaign finance reform, although of course subsequent events could upgrade them.  We may well end up with green energy and IP reform but more likely as the result of technologies and market prices, rather than from successful intellectual battles.

Overall it is very hard to have much influence.

Who will win the Nobel Prize in economics this year?

I see a few prime candidates:

1. Richard Thaler joint with Robert Schiller.  

2. Martin Weitzman and William Nordhaus, for their work on environmental economics.

3. Three prominent econometricians of your choice, bundled.

4. Jean Tirole, possibly bundled with Oliver Hart and other game theorists/principle agent theorists.  But last year the prize was in a similar field so the chances here have gone down for the time being.

5. Doug Diamond, bundled with another theorist or two of financial intermediation, such as John Geanakopolos.  Bernanke probably has to wait, although that may militate against the entire idea of such a prize right now.

6. Dale Jorgenson plus ???? (Baumol?) for a productivity prize.

I see #1 or #2 as most likely, with Al Roth and Ernst Fehr also in the running.  Sadly, it seems it is too late for the deserving Tullock.

In general I think Robert Barro has a good chance but I don't see him being picked so close to a financial crisis; the pick would be seen as an endorsement of Barro's negative attitude toward fiscal stimulus and I don't expect that from the Swedes.  The financial crisis is a problem for Fama especially, though he is arguably the most deserving of the non-recipients.  Paul Romer is another likely winner, although they may wait until rates of growth pick up in the Western world.  He is still young.  The Thomson-Reuters picks seem too young and for Alesina the political timing probably is not right for the same reasons as Barro.

Here is a blog post on the betting odds for the literature prize; NgŠ©gÄ© wa Thiong'o is rising on the list.  Not long ago the absolute favorite was Tomas Tranströmer, who perhaps should start his own line of toys or have his name put on a school of engineering.