Thomas Romer's research explores the interaction of the market and nonmarket forces that influence the allocation of economic resources. His work on the politics and economics of local governments’ taxation and spending behavior was awarded the Duncan Black Prize of the Public Choice Society. Other work has dealt with land use regulation, campaign finance, the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s, education finance, and the political economy of redistribution. 

Prior to coming to Princeton, he taught at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Western Ontario. He has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Trade Commission, Stanford University, Sydney University, New York University, the Institute for Advanced Study (in Princeton and in Toulouse), and Pompeu Fabra University; and a fellow of the Hoover Institution, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the Russell Sage Foundation. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He has served on several advisory panels of the National Science Foundation, and was the chair of the Scientific Council of the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse. He was a member of the editorial boards of the American Economic Review and Public Choice. At Princeton, he was the Chair of the Politics Department, Faculty Chair of the Master in Public Policy Program, and Director of the Research Program in Political Economy.

B.Sc, MIT, Ph.D. Yale University.