David H. Romer | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Romer atASSA 2026 | |
| Born | (1958-03-13)March 13, 1958 (age 67) |
| Spouse | Christina Romer |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Princeton University (BA) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD) |
| Doctoral advisor | Stanley Fischer[1] |
| Influences | John Maynard Keynes,Robert Solow,Kenneth Arrow |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Macroeconomics |
| School or tradition | New Keynesian economics |
| Institutions | University of California, Berkeley |
| Website | |
David Hibbard Romer (born March 13, 1958) is an American economist, the Herman Royer Professor ofPolitical Economy at theUniversity of California, Berkeley, and the author of a standard textbook in graduatemacroeconomics as well as many influential economic papers, particularly in the area ofNew Keynesian economics. He is also the husband and close collaborator ofCouncil of Economic Advisers former ChairwomanChristina Romer.
After graduating from Amherst Regional High School in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1976, he obtained hisbachelor's degree in economics fromPrinceton University in 1980 and graduated as thevaledictorian of his class. Romer completed a 138-page long senior thesis "A Study of the Effects of Population on Development, with Applications to Japan."[2] Romer worked as a Junior Staff Economist at theCouncil of Economic Advisers from 1980 to 1981 before beginning hisPh.D. at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology, which he completed in 1985. A reduced version of his undergraduate thesis research was published in theReview of Economics and Statistics.[3] Upon completion of his doctorate, he started working as anassistant professor at Princeton University. In 1988 he moved toUniversity of California, Berkeley and was promoted to full professor in 1993.
Romer's early research made him one of the leaders of theNew Keynesian economics. Specifically, an influential paper withLaurence M. Ball, published in 1989, established that real rigidities (that is, stickiness in relative prices) can exacerbate nominal rigidities (that is, stickiness in nominal prices).[4]
Romer's most widely cited paper is "A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth," coauthored withGregory Mankiw andDavid N. Weil and published in theQuarterly Journal of Economics in 1992. The paper argues that theSolow growth model, once augmented to include a role for human capital, does a reasonably good job of explaining international differences in standards of living. According toGoogle Scholar, it has been cited more than 25,000 times, making it one of the most cited articles in the field of economics.
In more recent work, Romer has worked with Christina Romer on fiscal andmonetary policy from the 1950s to the present, using notes from the meetings of theFederal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and the materials prepared by Fed staff to study how theFederal Reserve makes its decisions. His work suggests that some of the credit for the relatively stable economic growth in the 1950s should lie with good policy made by the Federal Reserve,[5] and that the members of the FOMC could at times have made better decisions by relying more closely on forecasts made by the Fed professional staff.[6]
Most recently, the Romers have focused on the impact of tax policy on government and general economic growth. This work looks at the historical record of US tax changes from 1945–2007, excluding "endogenous" tax changes made to fight recessions or offset the cost of new government spending. It finds that such "exogenous" tax increases, made for example to reduce inherited budget deficits, reduce economic growth (though by smaller amounts after 1980 than before).[7] Romer and Romer also find "no support for the hypothesis that tax cuts restrain government spending; indeed ... tax cuts may increase spending. The results also indicate that the main effect of tax cuts on the government budget is to induce subsequent legislated tax increases."[8]
Romer has also written papers on some unusual subjects for a macroeconomist, such as “Do Students Go to Class? Should They?”,[9] and “Do Firms Maximize? Evidence from Professional Football.”[10]
Romer is a member of theAmerican Economic Association Executive Committee, the recipient of anAlfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, a fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a three-time recipient of Berkeley's Graduate Economic Association's distinguished teaching and advising awards. Professor Romer is co-director of the Program in Monetary Economics at theNational Bureau of Economic Research, and is a member of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee.[11]
Romer is the author of "Advanced Macroeconomics," a standard graduate macroeconomics text, now in its 5th edition.[12] He was an editor of theBrookings Papers on Economic Activity from 2009 to Fall 2015 and, according to a January 2022 AEA announcement, will become the lead editor of theJournal of Economic Literature beginning July 2022.
Romer is married toChristina Romer, who was his classmate at MIT and is his colleague in the Economics Department atUniversity of California, Berkeley. They have adjoining offices in the department,[13] and collaborate on much of their research.[14] The couple has three children together.
Romer has two brothers, Evan and Ted Romer.Greg Mankiw served as best man at their wedding (Romer served as best man at Mankiw's wedding).[15][16]
He is not related to the economistPaul Romer (the former Chief Economist of theWorld Bank and co-recipient of the 2018Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences).
Senior thesis
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