Paul Michael Romer (born November 6, 1955)[1] is an American economist and policy entrepreneur who is a University Professor in Economics at Boston College.

[2] Romer is best known as the former Chief Economist of the World Bank and for co-receiving the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared with William Nordhaus) for his work in endogenous growth theory.

[5][6] Romer was chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank until he resigned in January 2018 following a controversy arising from his claim of possible political manipulation of Chile's "ease of doing business" ranking.

His 1983 dissertation, supervised by José Scheinkman and Robert Lucas Jr., showed mathematical models of economies in which technological change resulted from intentional actions of people, such as research and development.

[5] Romer temporarily left academia in 2001 to found Aplia, a company which produces online problem sets for college students.

Although he was referring to the rapidly rising education levels in other countries compared to the United States, the quote became a rallying concept for economists and consultants looking for constructive opportunities amid the Great Recession.

[19] In his model, a host country would turn responsibility for a charter city over to a more developed trustee nation, which would allow for new rules of governance to emerge.

Paul Romer solved this problem by demonstrating how economic forces govern the willingness of firms to produce new ideas and innovations.

"[3] After receiving the prize, Romer described how he started thinking about the relationship between growth and innovation: "The question that I first asked was, why was progress .

[26] In June 2024, 16 Nobel Prize in Economics laureates, including Romer, signed an open letter arguing that Donald Trump’s fiscal and trade policies coupled with efforts to limit the Federal Reserve's independence would reignite inflation in the United States.