William Nordhaus, the pioneering economist who shared the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis, died Friday, November 30, at the age of 85, Yale News reported. He died following a battle with glioblastoma, a brain cancer.
For more than half a century, Nordhaus remained a central figure on the campus of Yale University, serving as a professor and later taking on roles within university governance. As reported by news.yale.edu, he was an inaugural member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences faculty senate when it was established in 2015 and later served as its chair.
Building the DICE Model
Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on May 31, 1941, Nordhaus began studying the economics of climate change in the 1970s, long before the subject attracted widespread academic attention, according to nobelprize.org. He arrived at Yale as an undergraduate in 1959—an event he often described as one of the great windfalls of his life—before earning his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967.
William Nordhaus, RIP.William Nordhaus, Nobel laureate who integrated economics and climate change, died on October 30 at age 85.https://t.co/CS3TW7jfJBHere is his homepage:https://t.co/weQEtBQO9UAnd his last book:"The Spirit of Green: The Economics of Collisions and… pic.twitter.com/icxScAwzlL
In 1992, coinciding with the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Nordhaus published the Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy model, commonly known as the DICE model. lemonde.fr noted that the framework sought to measure the future economic costs of greenhouse gas emissions to determine an optimal present price for carbon-emitting activities. This quantitative tool pioneered the concept of a carbon price per ton of CO2 as an economic incentive for energy transition.
Early iterations of his model calculated a carbon price of $4 or $5 per ton, placing him at odds with more interventionist economists. In 2006, a significant intellectual clash arose with British economist Nicholas Stern, whose government-commissioned report presented a far more alarmist outlook on global heating. lemonde.fr reported that Nordhaus criticized Stern’s methodology regarding discounting rates and the calculation of irreversibility costs, such as large-scale deforestation.
Policy Advice and Textbook Legacy
As scientific understanding of global warming evolved, Nordhaus adjusted his models to project increasingly severe economic damages. He eventually advocated for a global carbon tax, distancing himself from colleagues who argued a single global carbon price could be established purely through the force of the free market.
Beyond his academic research, Nordhaus advised the U.S. government. He served as an economic adviser to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1979, and held advisory positions on the Congressional Budget Office Panel of Economic Experts, the Bureau of Economic Analysis Advisory Committee, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He also served as president of the American Economic Association.
In education, news.yale.edu noted that Nordhaus shaped generations of students by taking over co-authorship of the standard textbook Economics in 1985. Originally published in 1948 by economist Paul Samuelson, Nordhaus maintained and updated the volume through its 19th edition following Samuelson’s death in 2009.
