The distinction between objects and ideas is arguably the most important in economics. In a world with more people, each person has fewer objects but access to more ideas. So far, the benefit we derive from access to more ideas has far outweighed the disadvantage of fewer objects. People today have less arable land per capita, but still consume more food per capita because of all the ideas we have discovered and shared.

As you’d expect from the name, a charter city is a city governed by a charter. Sounds simple, but it’s a surprisingly powerful way to let people choose to move someplace that is well governed. A fanciful example helps illustrate how a charter city might develop. An existing treaty between the United States and Cuba currently gives the United States administrative control over a piece of sovereign Cuban territory straddling Guantanamo Bay that is twice the size of Manhattan.

Several people have asked me for a link to the site with the high resolution NASA photo of the world at night. I’ve used this picture in several presentations to illustrate geographic variation in the level of economic activity. It is revealing to zoom in on specific regions and countries. This post originally appeared on the NYU Stern Urbanization Project’s blog. To read the original post, click here.

How can a struggling country break out of poverty if it’s trapped in a system of bad rules? Economist Paul Romer unveils a bold idea: “charter cities,” city-scale administrative zones governed by a coalition of nations. (Could Guantánamo Bay become the next Hong Kong?)

Technologies rearrange materials with ingenious recipes and formulas. More people create more technologies, which in turn generates more people. In recent decades technology has enabled the “demographic transition” which lowers birthrates and raises income per person even higher as population levels off. This video records a presentation I gave at the Long Now foundation in May of 2009. It was my first public presentation of the ideas behind the concept of a Charter City.