It is here, & here is a blog he passes along from his writings inside the Bank. Here is Romer on his dyslexia.
Paul Romer’s blog post “Romer slaughters kittens”
Previous post: What I’ve been reading
Next post: Racism without racists?
Our Books
Buy at B&N: The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream
Buy at Amazon: The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream
Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation
Modern Principles of Economics
Launching The Innovation Renaissance
The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will(Eventually) Feel Better
Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World
Discover Your Inner Economist
Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding
Judge and Jury: American Tort Law on Trial
Markets and Cultural Voices: Liberty vs. Power in the Lives of Mexican Amate Painters (Economics, Cognition, and Society)
The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society (Economics, Cognition, and Society)
Creative Destruction: How Globalization Is Changing the World's Cultures
Changing the Guard: Private Prisons and the Control of Crime
What Price Fame?
In Praise of Commercial Culture
Entrepreneurial Economics: Bright Ideas from the Dismal Science
Contact Us
Mr Romer is trying to teach lessons that his staff should have absorbed in secondary school.
Having worked for the World Bank on one or two occasions, I can tell you it’s not about grammar. It’s about trying to squeeze in contradictory or overlapping goals and projects so that nothing is changed, and all your pet ideas are funded. For example, “We want to increase efficiency in waste collection in Country X and promote green ideas and be more inclusive of women while increasing spending to promote innovation and maintain higher standards at lower cost.”
Most examples are far worse than this. Multiply over the course of a 5 to 50 page document.
“We want to increase efficiency in waste collection in Country X and promote green ideas and be more inclusive of women while increasing spending to promote innovation and maintain higher standards at lower cost.”
Don’t we all?
This is why we can’t give economists nice things, isn’t it?
LOL. Thanks.
Thank you for information…
I’ve never really been exposed to Romer’s work before, but after a few minutes of reading the above links, I’m a fan.
I don’t get it. Why should I care about this incoherent blog post?
Well, at least you avoided using ‘and.’
Do not economists make forecasts by studying cats’ entrails? If they don’t, would it make their forecasts more or less accurate?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruspex
You can’t change such a large department that is itself embedded in a large bureaucracy. Either you take it apart completely and start from scratch or you make incremental changes. Large changes cause a lot of damage. You take away their money, you take away their ability to build their marketability and their external market worth. Only half a dozen of them can write quality papers on their own (two RCT stars, one health guy, one governance guy and may be a couple of others). The rest need to buy influence by paying for expensive co-authors or conferences. This is a group of people who are risk averse and adept at playing politics. They are not interested in change. The group characteristics come from strong group selection effects. Those that survive for a decade or more are better skilled at playing these games than one outspoken professor.
has Romer shown any sign of self awareness making change happen in large organization requires more than wading in and reading the riot act?
See also ”Trump, Donald J.”
“&” — I’m guessing Tyler chuckled to himself there.
Given enough time, I can edit. Anybody can. But I do not write well. I suffer from dyslexia, so I find it challenging to spot misspelled words or missing words prose that I write.
That describes me well.
Of course, the people to whom Romer is speaking know full well he is speaking directly to them. Who might that be? People who split their infinitives? People who mismatch plural and singular? Or people who write vaguely and imprecisely in order to obfuscate and mislead?
“those of us in the Bank who take advantage of open source should contribute to the projects that we use”: what does he mean “should”? Has he met many economists?
Regarding the ongoing “and” + ” covfefe” kerfuffle.
“Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.”
http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/Cmabrigde/newscientist_letter/