Paul Romer

Paul Michael Romer is a American economist and a professor with the Université of Stanford. He is regarded an expert of the Economic growth and as a potential future prize winner of the “Nobel Prize” of economy.

Romer obtained its diplomas of Bachelor off Science in Physique in 1977 and a Ph.D. in economy in 1983, both with the Université of Chicago. Romer was named one of the 25 most influential personalities of America by Time Magazine in 1997. Romer is the son of a governor of the Colorado, Roy Romer.

Academic contributions

The most important work of Paul Romer is in the field of the Economic growth. The economists studied the growth on the long run in a wide way in the Années 1950 and 1960. Work of Robert Solow, for example, established the primacy of the development Technologique in the explanation of sustained high growths in the results by worker. Work of Romer in the Years 1980 and 1990 consisted in building representations Mathématiques economy S in which the Technological advance is the result of intentional actions of the population, such as for example the Research and development, and either something which evolves/moves spontaneously.

Main themes

The Economic growth occurs when people take Ressources and rearrange them in configurations which have more value. A useful metaphor for the production in a economy comes from the kitchen. To create finished products of value, one mixes not very expensive ingredients whole in a receipt. The kitchen which one can make is limited by the Approvisionnement of ingredients, and in the same way the majority of the methods in the economy produce undesirable side effects. If the Economic growth could be only realized by making more and more the same kind of receipt, one would miss possibly raw materials and one would suffer from unacceptable levels of Pollution and Nuisance. The History sign, however, that the Economic growth emerges from better receipts, not only of more than kitchen. New receipts produce generally less undesirable side effects and generate more economic value per unit of raw material.

Each generation perceived the limits of the growth that the Ressource S limited and the undesirable effects would involve if no new receipt or idea were discovered. And each generation underestimated the potential of discovered new receipts and ideas. Regularly, we do not manage to seize how much ideas remain to be discovered. The possibilities are not added. They multiply.

Because of his reflections on the limitation of the natural resources, Paul Romer is sometimes called " post-scarcity prophet".

Publications

"Growth Cycles, " with George Evans and Seppo Honkapohja (American Economic Review, June 1998)
" Science, Economic Growth and Public Policy" (in B. Smith and C. Barfield, eds., Technology, R & D, and the Economy, Brookings Institution and American Enterprise Institute, 1996)
" Endogenous Technological Change" (Newspaper off Political Economy, October 1990)
" Increasing Returns and Long Run Growth" (Newspaper off Political Economy, October 1986).
Macroeconomics, Study Guides and Aplia Activation Card , with Paul Krugman and Robin Wells.

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