William Nordhaus facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
William Nordhaus
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Nordhaus in Stockholm, December 2018
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William Dawbney Nordhaus
May 31, 1941 Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.
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| 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 |
William Dawbney Nordhaus, born on May 31, 1941, is a famous American economist. He was a professor of economics at Yale University. He is well-known for his work on economic models and climate change. In 2018, he won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He received the prize for showing how to include climate change in long-term macroeconomic analysis, which looks at the economy on a large scale.
Contents
About William Nordhaus
William Nordhaus was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His father, Robert J. Nordhaus, helped start the Sandia Peak Tramway. William Nordhaus went to Phillips Academy in Andover.
Education and Early Career
He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Yale in 1963 and 1972. He also got a certificate from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in 1962. In 1967, he earned his PhD from MIT.
Nordhaus has been a professor at Yale since 1967. He worked in both the Economics department and the School of the Environment. From 1977 to 1979, he was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. This group advises the President of the United States on economic matters.
Nordhaus lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with his wife, Barbara.
Key Ideas in Economics and Climate Change
William Nordhaus has written or edited more than 20 books. One of his most popular books is Economics, which he wrote with Paul Samuelson. This textbook has been used by many students for decades. It has been printed in 19 different editions and 17 languages.
Nordhaus has also written several books about global warming and climate change. These include Managing the Global Commons: The Economics of Climate Change (1994). Another important book is The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World.
Measuring Economic Well-being
In 1972, Nordhaus and James Tobin wrote an article called "Is Growth Obsolete?". In this article, they introduced the Measure of Economic Welfare (MEW). This was an early attempt to include environmental factors in how we measure a country's wealth.
Nordhaus also believes that the way we measure national income needs to be improved. He thinks that current measures do not fully account for changes in the quality of goods and services. For example, he points out that a modern car is very different from an old horse-drawn carriage. He also compares a Pony Express to a facsimile machine to show how much technology has changed.
Economist Filip Palda explains Nordhaus's idea. He says that we should measure goods by their features, not just their price. This would help us understand how much better new products are. It would also help governments calculate the true cost of living.
Economics of Climate Change
Nordhaus is well-known for his work on the economics of climate change. He created the DICE and RICE models. These models help us understand how the economy, energy use, and climate change affect each other.
In his 1993 book, Reflections on the Economics of Climate Change, he wrote:
Mankind is playing dice with the natural environment through a multitude of interventions–injecting into the atmosphere trace gases like the greenhouse gases or ozone-depleting chemicals, engineering massive land-use changes such as deforestation, depleting multitudes of species in their natural habitats even while creating transgenic ones in the laboratory, and accumulating sufficient nuclear weapons to destroy human civilizations.
Nordhaus believes that parts of the economy that rely on nature, like agriculture and forestry, will be most affected by climate change. He also takes the possible serious impacts of climate change very seriously.
In 2015, Nordhaus introduced the idea of a "climate club." This is a group of countries that agree to have stronger policies to fight climate change. These countries would use carbon pricing and charge a fee on goods imported from countries outside the club that do not have similar carbon pricing. The European Union's CBAM is an example of such a system.
In 2020, Nordhaus said that reaching the 2 °C goal of the Paris Agreement was "impossible." He explained that even if we quickly move to zero emissions, carbon dioxide will still build up in the atmosphere. He also noted that the two-degree target was set without considering the costs of meeting it.
Awards and Recognition
William Nordhaus has received many honors for his work.
Scientific and Engineering Academies
He is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He is also an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since 1999, he has been a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. In 2020, he received the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize.
American Economic Association
In 2004, the American Economic Association (AEA) named Nordhaus a Distinguished Fellow. They praised his ability to ask big questions about how we measure economic growth and well-being. They also noted his work on the political business cycle. From 2014 to 2015, Nordhaus served as the president of the AEA.
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics
In 2018, Nordhaus won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences along with Paul Romer. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences recognized his work in creating an integrated assessment model. This model combines ideas from physics, chemistry, and economics to show how the economy and climate interact. Nordhaus's model is now widely used to understand how the economy and climate change together.
Many news outlets noted that Nordhaus was one of the first economists to support a carbon tax. A carbon tax is a fee on carbon emissions, which helps reduce pollution.
Understanding Nordhaus's Work
The Nobel Foundation explained Nordhaus's work by saying he "significantly broadened the scope of economic analysis by constructing models that explain how the market economy interacts with nature." His work helps us understand the effects of climate policies, like carbon taxes.
Some people have criticized Nordhaus's DICE model. One main point of criticism is how he uses "discounting." This refers to how much we value future costs and benefits compared to present ones. Other critics, like Robert Pindyck, argue that these models cannot fully capture the complex relationship between the climate and the economy. Nicholas Stern also suggested that the model's "damage function" does not fully show all the important risks to society.
Economist Steve Keen has also criticized the economics of climate change, including Nordhaus's work. He argues that economists might underestimate the damage from climate change. He believes that the economic damages could be much worse than predicted, possibly threatening human civilization.
See also
- List of Jewish Nobel laureates
