Paul Romer

"First, a Charter City has to be big. Viable cities will have millions of residents, so a zone has to be big to accommodate them."

"You will almost never see an economist whom the academics themselves regard as important or interesting. For example, niether Robert Lucas, without question the most influential economic theorist of the 1970s, nor Paul Romer, arguably the most influential theorist of the 1980s, has ever appeared on any public affairs program."

"With a Startup City, you can propose something entirely new and let people choose whether they want to live under its rules, as embodied in its charter, the document that specifies its founding principles. People who want to try the reform can go there, and people who don’t, they don’t have to. With a startup, you can have reform without coercion."

"Romer demonstrates how knowledge can function as a driver of long-term economic growth. . . . Previous macroeconomic research had emphasised technological innovation as the primary driver of economic growth, but had not modelled how economic decisions and market conditions determine the creation of new technologies. Paul Romer solved this problem by demonstrating how economic forces govern the willingness of firms to produce new ideas and innovations."