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Today, we're going to be
talking about Paul Romer.
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Paul Romer taught for a long time
at Stanford University.
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More recently, he moved
to New York University.
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And he's most famous for being
one of the architects of new growth theory,
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though, more recently,
he's becoming famous
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for his work in development economics,
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in fact, for his entrepreneurship
in development economics.
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More on that soon.
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Romer's most famous paper is called
"Endogenous Technical Change".
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This is a monumental paper,
a foundational paper in new growth theory,
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and it has led to a huge outpouring
of work in growth theory.
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We'll be able to discuss
the paper in much detail,
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but let me just give you
an essence of where it came from.
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Let's remember the Solow model.
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In the Solow model,
output is a function of A as ideas,
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and a combination of capital and labor.
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Now, Solow made
two assumptions about ideas, A.
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First, ideas were a public good.
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They were freely available
to anyone in the world.
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Second, --
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the growth in ideas was exogenous,
that is, outside the model.
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Ideas just kind of accumulated over time.
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Now, --
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in some ways,
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this was not such a terrible assumption,
particularly the first part.
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So, a lot of ideas are public good.
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So, for example,
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a force is equal
to mass times acceleration,
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the Pythagorean theorem,
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These are public goods
available to everyone.
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However, the second assumption
is really problematic, --
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because growth is about new ideas.
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And if you look around in the world,
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most research and development
is produced by for-profit firms.
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Growth ideas are not
coming out of the ether,
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they're not just arriving magically,
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they happen in some places
and not in other places,
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and they happen for a reason.
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They happen because, most of the time,
someone is out to make a profit.
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In developed economies,
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60% to 80% of research and development
is privately produced by for-profit firms.
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Now, Solow, however, made
these assumptions for a reason.
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He made these assumptions because
they made the model much much simpler,
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because, with these assumptions,
ideas are freely available,
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they're literally free,
they're not priced.
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That means that capital and labor
can be sold in competitive markets;
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they can each receive
their marginal product.
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The product itself can be sold
in competitive markets,
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and the payments to capital and labor
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will nicely sum up to exactly
equal the price of the product.
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So everything works out beautifully
with competitive firms
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when ideas are not priced.
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However, --
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when ideas are priced,
we have a problem.
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Let's take a look.
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Ideas are non-rivalrous,
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and they cannot be sold
in competitive markets
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because the marginal cost is zero.
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So the classic example here
is the pharmaceutical.
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The first pill costs a billion dollars.
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The second pill costs 50 cents.
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That 50 cents that can be produced,
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the 2nd pill, and the 3rd,
and the 4th, and the 5th, --
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and the nth pill can be produced
in competitive markets.
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The 50 cents comes from
payments to capital and labor,
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which are just enough to cover
the 50 cents cost of the product.
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But, --
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that doesn't leave anything over
for producing the formula,
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for producing the idea which made --
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the pharmaceutical possible
in the first place.
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So you can't sell pharmaceuticals
in competitive markets, --
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because that doesn't leave
enough left over
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to fund the research and development
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which went into producing
the product in the first place.
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There has to be some monopoly power.
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Either the monopoly power
maybe comes from a patent,
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or maybe it comes from
being first to market,
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or having a trade secret,
or having some knowledge,
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or being able to do things better
than other people do.
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But you need some monopoly power --
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to fund these ideas.
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Ideas also create spillovers,
even when you have monopoly power.
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Well, the patent runs out over time.
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The idea itself can be copied
not directly but can be --
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the idea can still be useful
and still spread around the world.
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So what did Romer do?
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But what Romer did is he created
a model of growth based on ideas
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which were privately produced
by for-profit firms
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in monopolistically competitive
markets with spillovers.
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Now, --
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in one way, that's just
following the formula,
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that's just doing exactly what
we would hope a model should do.
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But bear in mind that everyone knew
this was kind of the right way to go.
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Everyone knew this was the right model.
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But Arrow failed to create this model,
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Samuelson failed to create this model,
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Solow failed to create this model.
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It wasn't until Romer,
that all the knots were tied,
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that we had all of these characteristics,
which we know are true,
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that ideas are produced
by monopolistic firms,
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that ideas are really important in growth.
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Ideas have spillovers.
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All of these ideas combined in a model;
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that was really Romer's,
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a supreme accomplishment,
in this paper of 1990.
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Now, I said the model was
a real technical achievement.
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That's true, --
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but the really important aspect is that
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economists often don't start to think
about things until we have a model.
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And what Romer did is he put ideas
at the heart of growth theory.
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And once you do that,
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you start to open up and start thinking
about a lot of new things.
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Like in the Solow model,
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it's all about
the accumulation of capital.
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Once you have ideas
at the heart of the model,
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you start thinking about things like
patents and intellectual property.
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You start thinking about universities,
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about capital markets
like venture capitalists
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and having a capital market,
strong capital market,
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so that entrepreneurs can
take their firms public.
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You start thinking about human capital,
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and why we might not have
enough human capital in research,
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why research might be underfunded,
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because we get spillovers,
because that's a monopolistic industry.
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You start asking yourselves
questions about:
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why do some ideas,
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how do ideas transmit
themselves across the world?
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How do they flow across the world?
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Where do ideas begin?
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Why does it take some ideas
a long time to transmit
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and other ideas move across
the world quite quickly?
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You get a whole new perspective on trade,
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and the importance of market size
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as generating the incentives
to produce R&D.
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You begin to think about differences
in types of ideas like technologies.
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These seem much more amenable
to be communicated across --
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different countries than do rules.
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Rules, by rules I mean things like:
how do people interact?
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Rules about --
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rules like how to create a corporation,
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how to create honest government.
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Rules like --
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democracy, the rule of law,
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honest judges,
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judges separated from politicians,
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a separation of powers.
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Much harder to transmit these ideas
and have these ideas adopted
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than it is to have ideas about, --
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you know, how to create
an engine, for example.
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You also begin to think about
where ideas are created
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and what is necessary to create new ideas.
You think about cities, --
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you think about density,
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of getting people close together
to transmit knowledge.
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You think about networks.
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So all of these ideas about ideas
were introduced --
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by the Romer model and put at
the center of growth theory by Paul Romer.
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So in the late 1980s,
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Romer had produced a number
of papers in new growth theory,
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culminating in this great 1990 paper.
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Many people thought he was
on the track for a Nobel Prize,
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which he may yet win deservedly in my view.
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And then something strange happened.
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Romer disappeared, --
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or at least it seemed that way
to many people in the economics profession.
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Romer actually gave up tenure.
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He gave up tenure at Stanford.
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He took an extended
five-year leave of absence from Stanford.
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To do what?
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Well, Romer created a startup.
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He created Aplia --
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which, long before it became
the buzzword that it is now,
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Aplia was the beginnings
of online education.
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Aplia was a homework solution.
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Professors could assign quizzes,
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could grade all their homework online,
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could do experiments online in economics.
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They could shift the demand curve.
Students could shift demand curves
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and supply curves.
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It was a fantastic, fantastic device, --
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and very successful.
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Romer ran Aplia for about seven years
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and then sold it for
a lot of money to Cengage.
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Aplia is still going strong today.
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So, did Romer leave new growth theory?
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Or did he take the lessons
of new growth theory,
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the importance of ideas,
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the importance of ideas
to create new ideas,
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to increase productivity,
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and did he apply those lessons
to a great startup?
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I think the latter.
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And Romer's story has not yet ended.
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Most recently, Romer has come up
with a startling new idea for development,
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charter cities.
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What is this?
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Well, let's go back to the problem.
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The problem is the iron rule of rules.
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What I mean by this is
that we saw that some rules,
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things like the rule of law,
things like anti-corruption,
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things like honesty in government.
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These types of rules are hard
to transmit.
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Now, why are they hard to transmit?
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Well, they may be hard to transmit
because they require a lot of interaction
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and a lot of coordination.
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It's kind of like getting everyone
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from driving on
the left-hand side of the road
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to switch to driving
on the right-hand side of the road.
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Everyone must agree to coordinate
on the new equilibrium,
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and that's really hard.
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There may be forces.
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You can't you do it, you know,
halfway, in halfway steps,
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you can't do it a little bit at a time.
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You've got to go all the way or nothing,
and that is very, very difficult.
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Sweden, by the way, actually
managed to do this in the 1970s.
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So in just the same way that
it's hard to get people to coordinate
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on switching from the right-hand side
to the left-hand side or vice-versa,
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it may be hard to get people
to coordinate out of the corruption trap.
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Once you become known,
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once the rules of helping out your cousin,
of helping out your tribe member.
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Once that rule becomes laid down,
a single person breaking from that rule --
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is gonna have a really hard time.
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they're gonna be squashed
right back down again.
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If you don't help out your cousin,
you're gonna be thrown out of the family.
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It's really hard to break out
of these coordination traps.
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So how do you do it?
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Well, the solution is startups --
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or a big push in ideas.
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This is like the big push idea coming
back to us again, but now it's in ideas.
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What do I mean exactly?
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Well, what I mean and what Romer means is
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to start up a new city,
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a new city on unoccupied land,
with a charter of new rules.
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What does he have in mind
for these new rules?
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Well, he wants the rules
to come from outside
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to launch this new equilibrium.
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So, for example, you take
an unoccupied piece of land
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in a developed country,
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and you would turn
that unoccupied piece of land over --
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to Canada, over to Great Britain,
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and have them apply this new set of rules,
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and then have people
voluntarily enter the city,
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voluntarily put themselves
under the new set of rules.
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Hong Kong here is the classic example.
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Remember it was Hong Kong, --
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which has actually completely
revolutionized China.
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And that's what Romer is hoping.
Start up a new city,
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create it not only as an end in itself
but as a demonstration project.
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New city of 10 million people or so
operating under completely new rules.
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New rules which have been
successful elsewhere,
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bring them to the new city.
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Now, Romer introduced this idea
only in 2010 or so; it's very recent.
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And yet, incredibly,
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he's already had some success
in pushing the idea --
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around the world.
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So Honduras, for example,
has indicated that it will create,
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in fact, has created
this unoccupied piece of land
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where these new rules
could be put in place.
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Right now, --
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Romer is looking for a third party
to come in and help run the new city.
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Canada is one possibility.
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He's got the judges from outside,
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also being willing to come in
and apply the new rules.
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Now bear in mind here;
something really important;
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and that is that the world
is urbanizing at a really fast rate.
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So take India, for example,
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it's got 800 million people or so
still living a rural existence.
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But it's clear,
over the next 20 to 30 years,
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hundreds of millions of these people
are going to be coming to cities,
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many of them new cities.
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So now is a great opportunity --
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to create fresh new cities.
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Cities not beholden to the old rules.
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Cities, for example, where caste
would no longer be recognized.
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That, at least is the hope.
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Will Romer be successful?
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Who knows. But it's a bold idea.
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He has revolutionized economics education,
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he revolutionized new growth theory.
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Perhaps this idea
is going to take off as well.
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Here's a couple of places you can
find out more about Paul Romer,
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particularly about
this new idea of charter cities.
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Russ Roberts has an excellent
interview at EconTalk.
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You can also look at Romer's TED talk.
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I want to also close with the following.
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You know, I see Paul Romer
is a lot like Coase,
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and that Coase didn't write very much.
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He produced only a handful of papers.
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But those papers were
absolutely revolutionary,
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and Romer is the same way.
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He hasn't written a lot, but what
he has written has been very deep,
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has been very fundamental,
has been much more important --
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than most other work
which goes on in economics.
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Indeed, when I think about the economists
which have most influenced me,
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when I think about the ideas which
I think about most on an everyday basis,
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which I use to interpret the world, --
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ideas which I use to interpret the world,
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a lot of them about growth theory,
about the importance of ideas,
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about trade, about markets,
they're coming from Paul Romer.
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So indeed, if you want
to take a look at my TED talk,
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Tabarrok's TED talk,
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you'll see that that's
really an introduction
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to the ideas of Paul Romer in many ways.
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So, thanks very much.