2009 Media
Charter Cities on the HBR List of 10 Breakthrough Ideas for 2010
“Groups of people always find it difficult to change the rules, even when other rules would clearly be better. Charter cities—dozens of them, perhaps even hundreds—could be the skunkworks that bring systemic change to entire nations. Ultimately, they could give the billions of people who will soon move to cities the chance to experiment with, and opt into, rules that let them achieve their full potential.” —Paul Romer (Harvard Business Review)
December 2009 | Harvard Business Review | The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas from 2010 »
Charter Cities in the German Financial Times and Capital Magazine
December 2009 | Capital | Der irre Vorshlag eines genialien Wissenschaftlers »
December 2009 | Financial Times Deutschland | Der irre Vorshlag eines genialien Wissenschaftlers »
Charter Cities in German Business Magazine brand eins
“Momentan haben Entwicklungsländer nur wenige Optionen, um Investoren anzulocken, die ihnen Infrastruktur bauen. Für die Regierungen sind solche Verträge schwer auszuhandeln, denn Firmen fürchten immer das politische Risiko, dass der nächste Präsident oder Machthaber den Vertrag bricht. Diese Angst wirkt wie eine Steuer auf Auslandsinvestitionen, eine Steuer der schlimmsten Sorte, denn sie bringt dem Gastland null Einnahmen.” —Paul Romer (brand eins Online)
September 2009 | Der Stadt-Plan »
Charter Cities on BBCCaribbean.com
“…[P]roposing some new rules [in a charter city] and then asking who would like to opt in—who would like to live under these new rules—could give us a mechanism to reform the rules under which we live, to change them, to improve them much more rapidly.” —Paul Romer (on BBCCaribbean.com)
04 November 2009 | BBCCaribbean.com Interview »
04 November 2009 | A Caribbean Charter City Idea? »
Paul Romer in Barcelona
“Romer lanzó una idea provocadora: que los países crearan zonas especiales en sus dependencias o territorios para experimentar nuevas reglas y modelos económicos.” —¿Un Hong Kong español? Una idea de Paul Romer
21 October 2009 | Televisió de Catalunya »
17 October 2009 | regió7.cat »
15 October 2009 | ¿Un Hong Kong español? Una idea de Paul Romer »
15 October 2009 | AVUI.cat »
14 October 2009 | CATRADIO.cat »
BBC World Service: Global Business
“There’s a little corner of economics where there still exists a sense of wonder about what is possible.” —Paul Romer (on BBC World Service’s Global Business)
20 October 2009 | Global Business: Paul Romer »
16 October 2009 | Global Business radio host Peter Day on ideas »
The Business of Innovation: Reshaping Cities
“The smart grid could collect the kind of information we need to reward good behavior. Reward behavior like conserving; reward time shifting so people use electricity at times when there isn’t peak demand.”
—Paul Romer (on CNBC’s The Business of Innovation)
05 October 2009 | The Business of Innovation: Reshaping Cities »
Charter Cities on Future Tense
“Now what this charter city idea builds on, is the potential for creating brand new places, where you start out with a very different set of rules, and then you let people opt in.”
—Paul Romer (on the Australian radio program Future Tense)
01 October 2009 | That Hong Kong Feeling »
Charter Cities in Freakonomics
“In the developing world, most people don’t yet live in big well-run cities. Given the chance to move to one, hundreds of millions of people would go there to get a job, get an education for their children, and live in a place that is clean, safe, and healthy. Other people will make a profit by hiring them or supplying them with infrastructure and other services. If the rules let this happen, everyone can be better off. It doesn’t take any charity to build well-run cities.”
—Paul Romer (in Freakonomics)
29 September 2009 | Can ‘Charter Cities’ Change the World? A Q&A With Paul Romer »
Charter Cities in the Boston Globe
“He sees charter cities as beachheads where laws and institutions and habits that have worked in the wealthy world can take root, and as civic laboratories where new ways of doing business and hybrids of local and imported customs can emerge. Unemployed workers and frustrated entrepreneurs from the host country would flock there for the opportunities; international firms would be drawn by the combination of First World stability and cheap labor. And from these nodes, money and expertise, laws and norms would spread throughout the rest of the country and, potentially, the developing world. Ultimately, their work done, the cities would revert to local control.” —The Boston Globe
06 September 2009 | City of Dreams »
Charter Cities in Forbes
“I’m trying to harness the most powerful force on the planet: mutually beneficial exchange.” —Paul Romer (in Forbes article)
02 September 2009 | Postcolonialism »
The Power of Ideas in Singapore and Charter Cities on TODAY Online
“Much of the increase in value created in this century will come from better rules because they will let more people get access to existing technologies. And better rules are also the way to encourage new technologies.” —Paul Romer (in TODAY online article)
29 August 2009 | Dr Paul Romer Says… »
Charter Cities Discussion on Newsweek.com
“There’s a thin line between revolutionary and crazy.” —William Easterly (from the Newsweek blog post)
12 August 2009 | The Best Development Plan in the World Originated With…the British Empire? »
Charter Cities TED Talk Commentary on The Spectator
“The establishment of ‘bridgehead’ city-states could do wonders for variety and choice…” —The Spectator
12 August 2009 | The Wiki Man »
Charter Cities TED Talk, Summary on TEDBlog
“Romer asserts that we must preserve choices for people and operate on the right scale. A village is too small and a nation too big. Cities give you the right balance. The proposal he conceives of is a charter city with investors to build infrastructure, firms to hire people and families who will raise children there. All he wants is some good rules, uninhabited land and choices for leaders, which he thinks should translate to partnerships between nations.”
—TEDBlog
23 July 2009 | Paul Romer at TEDGlobal 2009: Running notes from Session 7 »
Charter Cities TED Talk, Summary on Forbes.com
“China’s example of breakout growth in the past 20 years is a result of measured rule-changing, of staged development toward a market model—from Hong Kong north to the special economic zones in the mainland south and then on to 14 coastal cities extending beyond Beijing. China changed its rules from a closed economy, preserving choices for people and doing it at the right scale.” —Forbes.com
22 July 2009 | Radical Development »
Hong Kong and China's Special Economic Zones, Worldchanging.com Article
“Hong Kong was the most successful economic development program in history.” —Paul Romer (in Worldchanging.com article)
24 June 2009 | Special Innovation Zone: Imagination Without Regulation »
Review of Paul Romer's and Chad Jones's Summary Paper on Growth
“Nicolas Kaldor’s original article in 1961 also laid out six facts. They predominantly described the behavior and ratio of inputs and outputs: measured capital, labor, GDP, interest rate, and so forth. These new facts, as the authors discuss, define the agenda of study among growth scholars and show how much progress has been made in the field.” —growthology.org
22 June 2009 | The Facts of Growth (Not a Mystery) »
Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) and Business Leadership South Africa Round Table Discussion
“Poverty and inequality are not an argument against trying to arrange a deal where people get jobs that pay a relatively low wage. A low wage is better than no wage. Converting the unemployment problem to a low wage problem is a vital step forward. Just being in a job helps people develop new skills. It should therefore be a high priority to push with all available tools to reducing unemployment levels.” —Paul Romer (in Business Report article)
10 March 2009 | Creating Jobs for Unskilled People Must Be a Priority »