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Paul Michael Romer is an economist and professor at Stanford University. He is considered as an expert on economic growth and considered a candidate for the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics[1].

Romer earned a B.S. in physics in 1977 and a Ph.D. in economics in 1983, both from the University of Chicago. Romer was named one of America's 25 most influential people by Time Magazine in 1997. Romer is the son of former Colorado Governor Roy Romer.

Paul Romer's most important work is in the field of economic growth. Economists studied long-run growth extensively during the 1950s and 1960s. The work of Robert Solow, for example, established the primacy of technological progress in accounting for sustained increases in output per worker. Romer's work in the 1980s and 1990s amounted to constructing mathematical representations of economies in which technological change is the result of the intentional actions of people, such as research and development.

“Economic growth occurs whenever people take resources and rearrange them in ways that are more valuable. A useful metaphor for production in an economy comes from the kitchen. To create valuable final products, we mix inexpensive ingredients together according to a recipe. The cooking one can do is limited by the supply of ingredients, and most cooking in the economy produces undesirable side effects. If economic growth could be achieved only by doing more and more of the same kind of cooking, we would eventually run out of raw materials and suffer from unacceptable levels of pollution and nuisance. History teaches us, however, that economic growth springs from better recipes, not just from more cooking. New recipes generally produce fewer unpleasant side effects and generate more economic value per unit of raw material.

"Every generation has perceived the limits to growth that finite resources and undesirable side effects would pose if no new recipes or ideas were discovered. And every generation has underestimated the potential for finding new recipes and ideas. We consistently fail to grasp how many ideas remain to be discovered. Possibilities do not add up. They multiply.”

Economic Growth, by Paul M. Romer: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics: Library of Economics and Liberty

• "Growth Cycles," with George Evans and Seppo Honkapohja (American Economic Review, June 1998)
• "Science, Economic Growth and Public Policy" (in B. Smith and C. Barfield, eds., Technology, R&D, and the Economy, Brookings Institution and American Enterprise Institute, 1996)
• "Endogenous Technological Change" (Journal of Political Economy, October 1990)
• "Increasing Returns and Long Run Growth" (Journal of Political Economy, October 1986).

• Paul Romer's home page at Stanford
• Interview with Reason Magazine
• Aplia.com