William Nordhaus
William Nordhaus | |
---|---|
Born | William Dawbney Nordhaus May 31, 1941[2] Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S. |
Education | Yale University (BA, MA) Sciences Po Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD) |
Awards | BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2017) Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2018) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Environmental economics |
Institutions | Yale University |
Thesis | A theory of endogenous technological change (1967) |
Doctoral advisor | Robert Solow[1] |
Part of a series on |
Macroeconomics |
---|
William Dawbney Nordhaus (born May 31, 1941) is an American economist. He was a
Education and career
Nordhaus was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the son of Virginia (Riggs) and Robert J. Nordhaus,[5] who co-founded the Sandia Peak Tramway.[6][7] Robert J. Nordhaus was from a German Jewish family – his father Max Nordhaus (1865–1936) had immigrated from Paderborn in 1883, and became a manager of The Charles Ilfeld Company branch in Albuquerque.[8][9]
Nordhaus graduated from
Nordhaus was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2013.[14] He served as the chairman of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston between 2014 and 2015.[15]
Nordhaus lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with his wife, Barbara, a social worker recently retired from the Yale Child Study Center.[12]
Contributions to economics and the study of climate change
Nordhaus is the author or editor of over 20 books. One of his early works is the wildly popular introductory textbook, Economics, co-authored with Paul Samuelson. Originally a project of Samuelson's alone, Nordhaus worked on the textbook from the 12th edition until the 19th (the most recent edition), starting in 1985.[16][17] The book was first published in 1948 and has appeared in nineteen different editions and seventeen different languages since then. It was a best-selling economics textbook for decades and is still extremely popular today. Economics has been called a “canonical textbook”, and the development of mainstream economic thought has been traced by comparing the nineteen editions over the 1948–2010 period.[18]
Nordhaus has also written several books on
In 1972, Nordhaus, along with fellow Yale economics professor James Tobin, published, "Is Growth Obsolete?",[20] an article that introduced the Measure of Economic Welfare (MEW), or Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW), as the first attempt to develop environmental accounting.
Nordhaus is also known for his critique of current measures of national income. For example, in a 1996 article, he wrote,[21]
If we are to obtain accurate estimates of the growth of real incomes over the last century, we must somehow construct price indexes that account for the vast changes in the quality and range of goods and services that we consume, that somehow compare the services of horse with automobile, of Pony Express with facsimile machine, of carbon paper with photocopier, of dark and lonely nights with nights spent watching television, and of brain surgery with magnetic resonance imaging.
Economist Filip Palda summarizes the importance of Nordhaus's insight when he writes,[22]
The practical lesson to be drawn from this fascinating study of lighting is that the way we measure the consumer price index is severely flawed. Instead of putting goods and their prices directly into the index we should reduce all goods to their constituent characteristics. Then we should evaluate how these goods can best be combined to minimize the cost of consuming these characteristics. Such an approach would allow us to include new goods in the consumer price index without worrying about whether the index of today is comparable to that of ten years ago when the good did not exist. Such an approach would also allow governments to more precisely calculate the rate at which welfare and other forms of aid should be increased. At present, such calculations tend to overestimate the cost of living because they do not take into account the manner in which increases in quality reduce the monetary cost of maintaining a certain standard of living.
Contributions on economics of climate change
Nordhaus has written on the
Mankind is playing dice with the natural environment through a multitude of interventions–injecting into the atmosphere trace gases like the
transgenic ones in the laboratory, and accumulating sufficient nuclear weaponsto destroy human civilizations.
According to the
In 2007, Nordhaus, who has done several studies on the
The Review's unambiguous conclusions about the need for extreme immediate action will not survive the substitution of discounting assumptions that are consistent with today's market place. So the central questions about global-warming policy–how much, how fast, and how costly–remain open. The Review informs but does not answer these fundamental questions.
In 2013, Nordhaus chaired a committee of the
In 2015, Nordhaus published an article promulgating his concept of a "climate club".
In a January 2020 interview with Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Nordhaus claimed that achieving the 2 °C goal of the Paris agreement was "impossible", stating that, "even if we make the fastest possible turn towards zero emissions, CO2 will continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, because we cannot simply shut down our economy". He asserted that he was not alone in making this assessment, claiming that half of the simulations arrived at the same conclusion. He also remarked that the two-degree target was set without reference to the costs of meeting the target.[33][34]
Honors
Scientific and engineering academies
Among many honors, he is a Member of the
American Economic Association
In 2004, Nordhaus was designated a Distinguished Fellow of the
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics
Nordhaus was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2018, which he shared with Paul Romer.[15] In detailing its reasons for giving the prize to Nordhaus, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences specifically recognized his efforts to develop "an integrated assessment model, i.e. a quantitative model that describes the global interplay between the economy and the climate. His model integrates theories and empirical results from physics, chemistry and economics. Nordhaus' model is now widely spread and is used to simulate how the economy and the climate co-evolve."[4]
Many of the news outlets that reported on Nordhaus's prize noted that he was in the early wave of economists who embraced a
Evaluations
The Nobel Foundation described Nordhaus's work as follows: "William Nordhaus’s findings deal with interactions between society, the economy and climate change. In the mid-1990s, he created a quantitative model that describes the global interplay between the economy and the climate. Nordhaus’s model is used to examine the consequences of climate policy interventions, for example carbon taxes." Additionally, the Nobel Prize announcement commented that Nordhaus had “significantly broadened the scope of economic analysis by constructing models that explain how the market economy interacts with nature."[42] In an evaluation of the work, Lint Barrage summarizes its impact, stating that the "body of work also represents science at its best: integrative across disciplines, visionary in scope yet incremental in progress, transparent, and producing knowledge for the benefit of humankind."[43]
Critics of Nordhaus's DICE model focus on several aspects. One of the most important, incorporating political and moral philosophy, is the use of discounting, with an early study by William Cline.[44] Another branch, represented by Robert Pindyck, holds that integrated assessment models cannot capture the complexity of the climate-economy nexus.[45] Nicholas Stern argued that the damage function does not capture many of the most important risks to society.[46] A particularly important critique, developed by Martin Weitzman, is that the economy-climate system may have "fat tails" and therefore inadequately deal with low probability, high consequence outcomes.[47]
In an article by Christopher Ketcham on "theintercept.com"[48] there are a number of critical insights and critical views of Nordhaus' methods and assumptions, which didn't recognise or value tipping-cascades or non-elastic eco and environmental risk.
Post-Keynesian economist Steve Keen criticises the economics of climate change generally and the 2018 work by Nordhaus in particular: "economists made their own predictions of damages, using three spurious methods: assuming that about 90% of GDP will be unaffected by climate change, because it happens indoors; using the relationship between temperature and GDP today as a proxy for the impact of global warming over time; and using surveys that diluted extreme warnings from scientists with optimistic expectations from economists." When specifically speaking about Nordhaus, he says that "Nordhaus has misrepresented the scientific literature to justify the using a smooth function to describe the damage to GDP from climate change. Correcting for these errors makes it feasible that the economic damages from climate change are at least an order of magnitude worse than forecast by economists, and may be so great as to threaten the survival of human civilization."[49]
See also
References
- ^ "PDS SSO". library.mit.edu.
- ISBN 978-0313225543. Retrieved October 11, 2018.
- ^ Appelbaum, Binyamin (October 8, 2018). "2018 Nobel in Economics Awarded to William Nordhaus and Paul Romer". The New York Times.
- ^ a b "The Prize in Economic Sciences 2018" (PDF) (Press release). Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. October 8, 2018.
- ^ "Albuquerque Journal Obituaries". obits.abqjournal.com.
- ^ Davenport, Coral (May 10, 2014). "Brothers Battle Climate Change on Two Fronts". The New York Times.
- ^ "Sandia Peak Ski & Tramway – History & Technology". sandiapeak.com.
- PMID 16803963.
- ISBN 978-0618001965– via Google Books.
- ^ a b "William Dawbney Nordhaus Will Marry Barbara Feise". The New York Times. May 3, 1964. Retrieved October 8, 2018.
- .
- ^ a b c d e "William D. Nordhaus". economics.yale.edu. Yale Department of Economics. Archived from the original on February 11, 2019. Retrieved October 8, 2018.
- ^ Harris, Richard (February 11, 2014). "Economist Says Best Climate Fix A Tough Sell, But Worth It". Washington, D.C.: National Public Radio. Retrieved October 1, 2017.
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved March 17, 2021.
- ^ a b c "Yale's William Nordhaus wins 2018 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences". YaleNews. October 8, 2018. Retrieved October 8, 2018.
- JSTOR 1182949.
- ISBN 9780073511290.
- ^ Smith, Leanne (2000). "Introduction". A study of Paul A. Samuelson's Economics : making economics accessible to students : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Economics at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand (Thesis). Massey University. p. 2.
- ISBN 978-0300189773.
- ISBN 0-870-14259-3.
- ISBN 978-0-226-07415-3.
- ISBN 978-0-9877880-4-7.
- ^ a b Nordhaus, W. D. '"Reflections on the economics of climate change", Journal of Economic Perspectives (1993); 7(4) 11–25 at pp. 11, 15
- S2CID 23232493.
- ^ Nordhaus, William (May 3, 2007). "The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change" (PDF). Yale University.
- ^ "U.S. Tax Code Has Minimal Effect on Carbon Dioxide and Other Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Report Says". National Academies. Retrieved July 7, 2015.
- ISSN 0002-8282.
- ^ "William Nordhaus". scholar.google.com. Retrieved December 10, 2023.
- ISSN 0140-9883.
- ISSN 2624-9553.
- S2CID 252179609.
- S2CID 259617760.
- Swissinfo. January 26, 2020. Retrieved January 27, 2020.
- ^ Voigt, Birgit; Meier, Jürg (January 25, 2020). "Nobelpreisträger Nordhaus: Wir erreichen das 2-Grad-Ziel nicht". Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Retrieved January 27, 2020.
- ^ American Economic Association "Distinguished Fellows".
- ^ • William D. Nordhaus, 1975. "The Political Business Cycle," The Review of Economic Studies, 42(2), pp. 169–190.
• _____, 1989:2. "Alternative Approaches to the Political Business Cycle," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, pp. 1–68. - ^ American Economic Association, 2004. "William D. Nordhaus, Distinguished Fellow".
- ^ "American Economic Association". aeaweb.org.
- ^ Strauss, Delphine (October 8, 2018). "Economics Nobel recognises work on climate change and innovation: William Nordhaus and Paul Romer showed how to achieve sustained and sustainable growth". Financial Times.
Mr Nordhaus was an early advocate of carbon taxes, but the committee noted that the models he developed also allowed policymakers to calculate quantitative paths for the best tax showing how they would depend on [assumptions regarding the values of disparate climate and economic variables].
- ^ Appelbaum, Binyamin (October 8, 2018). "2018 Nobel in Economics Awarded to William Nordhaus and Paul Romer". The New York Times.
The Yale economist William D. Nordhaus has spent the better part of four decades trying to persuade governments to address climate change, preferably by imposing a tax on carbon emissions. His careful work has long since convinced most members of his own profession . ...
- ^ Linden, Eugene (October 25, 2018). "The economics Nobel went to a guy who enabled climate change denial and delay". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 31, 2018.
- ^ "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2018". NobelPrize.org. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
- . Retrieved June 17, 2021.
- ^ Cline, William (1992). The economics of global warming. Institute for International Economics.
- ISSN 0095-0696.
- S2CID 59019533.
- S2CID 225300874.
- ^ Ketcham, Christopher (October 29, 2023), When Idiot Savants Do Climate Economics, How an elite clique of math-addled economists hijacked climate policy.
- S2CID 225300874.
Further reading
- Samuel Randalls (2011). "Optimal Climate Change: Economics and Climate Science Policy Histories (from Heuristic to Normative)". Osiris. 26 (1): 224–242. S2CID 41522654.
External links
- Media related to William Nordhaus at Wikimedia Commons
- Quotations related to William Nordhaus at Wikiquote
- William Nordhaus (Yale Home Page)
- The Question of Global Warming Nordhaus exchange with Freeman Dyson and others from The New York Review of Books
- Energy: Friend or Enemy? October 27, 2012 in The New York Review of Books
- "William Nordhaus". JSTOR.
- William Nordhaus on Nobelprize.org including the Prize Lecture Climate Change: The Ultimate Challenge for Economics