FANTASY ISLAND: Paul Romer and the Multiplication of Hong Kong

Nina Ebner and Jamie Peck

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2022, vol. 46, issue 1, 26-49

Abstract: In this article we trace mobilizations of the Hong Kong ‘model’ through mutating policy networks to highlight connections made by (and around) Nobel‐prize‐winning economist Paul Romer, as a roving policy advocate for charter cities and as an ‘economist in the wild’. Frustrated in practice but politically resilient, the idea of charter cities recycles the notion of territorial enclaves founded on ‘empty’ land and governed in accordance with purified market rules. Typically indexed to a stereotypical reading of Hong Kong, this model repurposes the tabula‐rasa conceit of ‘startup’ urbanization, yoked to a neoliberal vision of ‘islands’ of experimentation. Via an account of the faltering mobilities of the charter‐cities model, the article explores the reciprocating circuits and recurring motifs that connect Romer's expertise as a prominent economist with expedient abstractions of the Hong Kong ‘model’, with the reproduction of ideologically selective policy networks, and ultimately, with the troubled frontiers of charter‐city policy development. It culminates in an examination of the protracted effort to build a ‘Hong Kong of the Caribbean’ in Honduras, where grandiose acts of policymaking projection and developmental hubris meet a repeating history of governmental corruption, corporate opportunism and banana republicanism.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.13060

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:46:y:2022:i:1:p:26-49

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0309-1317

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research is currently edited by Alan Harding, Roger Keil and Jeremy Seekings

More articles in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().