Nordhaus, William Dabney, 1941–, American economist, b. Albuquerque, N.Mex., Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1967. A professor at Yale since 1967, he has focused on the economic effects of global warming since the 1970s, studying how human economic activity contributes to and is affected by global warming and climate change and modeling their interaction. His Dynamic Integrated Climate Economy model was used by Nordhaus to predict the costs and benefits to the economy of a range of policy responses to climate change, leading him to argue for a carbon tax (a levy based on an energy source's carbon content) as the most effective way to lower emissions of greenhouse gases. For this work he shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Paul Romer in 2018.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Economics: Biographies
