The Nobel Symposium on Growth and Development

The Nobel Symposium on Growth and Development in Stockholm last week produced no great surprises. The conveners sought to stimulate conversation among participants in three or four different areas, macro and micro, in which significant developments had occurred during the past twenty-five years. These included:

Growth theory (Paul Romer, of New York University, and Robert Barro, of Harvard, led the program, discussed by Peter Howitt, of Brown and Philippe Aghion, of Harvard; by Robert Lucas, of the University of Chicago; and by Sendil Mullainithan, of Harvard);

Development economics (Mark Rosenzweig, of Yale, spoke first, followed by Robert Townsend, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Angus Deaton, of Princeton); Discussant: Claudia Goldin,* Harvard University 

Policy evaluation (Michael Kremer, of Harvard, and Esther Duflo, of MIT, discussed by Nancy Stokey, of the University of Chicago, and Guido Tabellini, of Bocconi University);

And the new institutional economics (Daron Acemoglu,** of MIT, discussed by Andrei Shleifer, of Harvard).

The presenters’ slides are here. The proceedings themselves are scheduled to be broadcast on Swedish television in October. The rest is up to the people who called the meeting.

*Co author of our December book club book - The Race Between Education and Technology

**Co author of our Sept. Book club book - Why Nations Fail.