Journalist Sebastian Mallaby has written a lengthy profile of economist Paul Romer, focusing on Romer’s obsessive promotion of “Charter Cities”. Paul Romer has solid academic credentials. He ‘invented’ endogenous growth theory in the late 1980s after earning a BS in physics (1977) and a PhD in economics (1983), both from the University of Chicago. These portions of Mallaby’s article caught my eye.
Romer is not just arguing for enclaves; he is arguing for enclaves that are run by foreign governments. To Romer, the fact that Hong Kong was a colonial experiment, imposed upon a humiliated China by means of a treaty signed aboard a British warship, is not just an embarrassing detail. On the contrary, British rule was central to the city
Tags: Canada, Cuba, growth, Paul Romer, profile