Checking in from the AEA conference

Here we are in Atlanta, host of this year's biggest annual meeting of economists from around the world, the AEAs. I had the fortune of bumping into David Warsh at the beginning of the one star-studded panel on growth, and we sat together near the back to list to Paul Romer, Daron Acemoglu, Dani Rodrik, and Philippe Aghion discuss "Growth in a Partially De-Globalized World."

Each presentation was interesting, but somewhat narrow I thought, aside from Romer.  Romer is a big thinker's big thinker, and his concept of a Charter City can, in my opinion, truly change the world. Overall, the lack of panels on growth is a bit disappointing. Certainly, a great deal of attention is focused on macro and basic discussions of the near-term prospects for the U.S. and world economy. But I get the sense that growth is a bit stagnant again, in a kind of rut that it was almost 20 years ago before endogeneity shook things up.

The full listing of panels and some of the papers available for download are at this link:
http://www.aeaweb.org/aea/conference/program/2010_AEA_meeting_papers.php

Not to slight Acemoglu (his co-authored paper is a cautionary note about the possible negative correlation between rising militarism and declining trade openness -- a first stab that seemed somewhat obvious while at the same time historically myopic ... was WW1 really about the "end" of globalization or rather just a pause?) or Rodrik (his presentation focused on China and the dilemma of its currency manipulation, pretty interesting but I honestly didn't learn anything that changed my worldview, not that it wasn't impressive) or Aghion (his heterdox call for a smart industrial policy did not go over well, but his comments on other presentations were solid), but Paul Romer's presentation really merits extensive notes.  I'll post those next...

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