Nobel Laureate Romer Will Join BC

BY ED HAYWARD STAFF WRITER

Nobel laureate Paul M. Romer, one of the most influential economists of this century, will join Boston College as the Seidner University Professor in the Carroll School of Management, beginning this fall.

Romer, a 2018 Nobel honoree, will launch the Carroll School’s new Center for the Economics of Ideas and join the faculty of the Finance Department, which is consistently ranked among the nation’s best undergraduate finance programs and among the most productive for faculty scholarship.

“Paul Romer’s pioneering work spans economics, technology, urbanism, and a range of other fields—consistently challenging conventional wisdom and summoning up new ways of understanding fundamentals,” said Provost and Dean of Faculties David Quigley.

“He possesses a remarkable fluency across topics and ways of knowing. His scholarship and teaching, and his leadership of the new Center for the Economics of Ideas at Boston College, promise to expand on his pathbreaking accomplishments and open up new horizons to direct change for the common good.”

The Seidner University Professorship was made possible through a gift from BC Trustee Marc Seidner ’88 and the Seidner family.

“I’m very excited about the course that Boston College is setting with the new Center for the Economics of Ideas,” said Romer, who joins BC following 13 years at New York University.

“In the pursuit of progress, the market can be the vehicle, but the values of science, scholarship, and enlightenment must be the compass. We’ve got plenty of disruption. What’s missing is direction.”

Andy Boynton, the John and Linda Powers Family Dean of the Carroll School of Management, said the addition of Romer to a world-class faculty offers great opportunities for both Boston College and the Carroll School.

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I had many teachers at BC who cared deeply about our intellectual lives, yet cared as much about the kind of people we would become...I dedicate these awards to them.

–carroll school faculty member thomas wesner page 3