Romer to Teach at BC

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“Paul Romer is one of the most respected and accomplished economists in the world,” said Boynton. “By joining the Carroll School faculty community, he provides an instant injection of large doses of imagination, intellect, and aspiration into every fiber of our culture. His palpable commitment to research and teaching will benefit all of our students and faculty, and our outstanding Finance Department, in particular, will continue its rapid ascent among the best in the world.”

Romer received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel “for integrating technological innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis.” He shared the prize with Yale University’s William Nordhaus.

In honoring Romer, the Nobel Prize organization said his central contribution demonstrated how knowledge can function as a driver of long-term economic growth: Romer “showed how economic forces govern the willingness of firms to produce new ideas. His central theory, which was published in 1990, explains how ideas are different to other goods and require specific conditions to thrive in a market.”

Romer says that his lasting contribution was a framework for understanding the economics of ideas that parallels the traditional economics analysis of scarce physical objects.

“With each passing day, we read about advances in artificial intelligence, so it now seems obvious that how we produce and distribute ideas is far more important than how we produce and distribute physical objects,” said Romer. “But when I was in graduate school, economists could not identify the fundamental difference between ideas and objects. At a practical level, this meant that they could not see how the social capital of trust, slowly accumulated for generations, facilitated the distribution of ideas. As a result, they could not anticipate the damage a new business model based on tracking and targeted digital advertising could do by eroding the social trust.”

A native of Denver, Romer studied at the University of Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

“We are delighted and proud that Paul is joining our faculty group,” said Ronnie Sadka, chair of the Finance Department and Haub Family Professor in the Carroll School. “We take great pride in our exceptional teaching and research, while maintaining a positive collegial culture. The addition of Paul demonstrates our ongoing commitment to excellence, and will greatly enhance the Finance Department and the Carroll School as a whole.”

Finance is a banner discipline at the Carroll School and most recently ranked eighth in the U.S. News & World Report’s annual survey. In the Academic Ranking of World Universities, also known as the Shanghai Ranking, the school placed seventh for finance globally.

The Carroll School of Management ranks among the nation’s best—with six academic departments and programs landing in the top 20 of their disciplines, according to the U.S. News survey of undergraduate schools of management in the United States.