People I (Mostly) Admire · Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher

11. Paul Romer: “I Figured Out How to Get Myself Fired From the World Bank.”

March 7, 2026·34 min·3 clips

Romer defines non-rival goods: a formula that can save any child's life, unlike a rival bottle of liquid.

Levitt starts with a fork in his own life. He entered graduate school wanting to be Paul Romer, then realized macroeconomics was not where his instincts belonged. The admiration stays. Romer is still the economist who was changing macroeconomics, won the Nobel Prize, built a successful tech company, and later became chief economist at the World Bank. The first stretch is about ideas: how they get heard, who gets to test them, and why people sometimes silence themselves before anyone else does. Romer wants more views in the conversation, especially views that sit outside the norm. He is not naive about it. Lower barriers can also fill the room with odd claims that take far longer to knock down than to make. For Romer, science needs integrity and reputation because someone has to judge who belongs in the serious exchange of new information. Then Levitt brings up the bigger, riskier idea: Romer's proposal for a separately run city in a developing country, which Levitt calls one of the craziest things an economist may have tried. Romer traces it to a USAID-commissioned presentation called "Building a Hong Kong for Africa." His hope was that one working local example could teach nearby economies. Hong Kong, in his telling, gave China and other Asian economies a model they could study. Still, the discomfort is hard to miss. Romer admits that importing Western institutions and rule of law into an African city-state brings up colonialism and exploitation almost immediately. What begins as Levitt admiring a brilliant economist turns into a careful test of who gets to suggest new rules, how institutions travel, and why good intentions do not wipe away history.

As heard by us

A reflective, theory-heavy conversation with Paul Romer about discovery, institutions, and the trouble with bold development ideas.

Steve Levitt opens this conversation with unusual candor: as a young economist, he once wanted to be Paul Romer, until graduate macroeconomics convinced him otherwise.

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Why you'd press play

If you like economists who think in systems, not slogans, start here.

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