Paul Romer throws in the towel. The head of the World Bank resigned Wednesday after being criticized for stating that Chile’s ranking in a Doing Business report may have been deliberately skewed under the chairmanship of socialist Michelle Bachelet.
Romer’s resignation, 15 only months after accepting the position, was announced in an internal memo issued by World Bank President Jim Yong Kim.
“I appreciated Paul’s frankness and honesty, and I know he regrets the circumstances of his departure,” said Kim, adding that Romer would resume his position as professor of economics at New York University. .
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on January 12, Romer apologized to Chile for the changes to the report’s methodology which he said “gave a false impression” on the business environment under Bachelet.
The annual report has long been controversial because it ranks countries according to indicators that evaluate them according to how their government bureaucracies affect, and often limit, their business environment.
Chile currently ranks 55 on 190 country on the list, against 34 in 2014, year when Bachelet took office. In recent years, his rankings were 41 in 2015, 48 in 2016 and 57 in 2017, according to reports from the World Bank.
Romer told the newspaper that the decline was a result of methodological changes, rather than a deterioration of the business environment in Chile, and that it may have been a result of the political motivations of World Bank staff.
