Developing world set to get charter cities boost

PAUL Romer, a respected economics professor known for his unorthodox ideas about urbanisation and growth-generating "charter cities", takes over in September as the World Bank's chief economist, the first American in this role in more than 15 years. His appointment represents a departure from the bank's recent practice of selecting chief economists from developing countries.

He is a professor at the New York University Stern School of Business and an entrepreneur. He follows Kaushik Basu, previously a Cornell University economist and adviser to the Indian government, and Justin Yifu Lin, a prominent Chinese economist who has championed China as a role model for developing countries.

Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, a vocal critic of the Washington consensus and western industrialised nations' influence on international aid agencies, is the most recent US economist in the post, serving between 1997 and 2000.