World Bank appoints Paul Romer as chief economist

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim on Monday announced that American economist Paul Romer will succeed Kaushik Basu as chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank.

"We're most excited about (Paul Romer's) deep commitment to tackling poverty and inequity and finding innovative solutions that we can take to scale," said Kim in a statement.

Romer is currently a professor at New York University (NYU) and director of NYU's Marron Institute of Urban Management. With his interest and understanding in urban and economic development, Romer helped built the Marron Institute of Urban Management and is also the founding director of the Urbanization Project at the NYU's Stern School of Business.

His recent urbanization research focuses on the many ways in which policymakers in the developing world can use the rapid growth of cities to create economic opportunities and undertake systemic social reform. He believed that experiences of cities, such as Hong Kong and Shenzhen, can be replicated in any country that wants to implement reforms and to promote economic growth.

Romer is also known as a proponent of "endogenous growth theory", which holds that economic growth is primarily the result of investment in human capital, innovation and knowledge.

He founded a start-up company Aplia, an education technology company dedicated to increasing student effort and classroom engagement.

Romer's appointment will take effective from September this year, said the World Bank.

"This position gives me a unique chance to learn about the thing that fascinates me most - producing knowledge that is useful in the sense that it yields benefits on the scale of billions of people," said Romer on his blog on Monday. Enditem