William Nordhaus

William Nordhaus is an American economist whose research links climate change, economic growth, and technological change. He received the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Integrated assessment model: A model that combines human and natural systems to analyze interactions such as economic activity and climate change. Nordhaus used this model class to connect economic decisions with climate dynamics.
DICE model: An integrated assessment model that links economic growth, greenhouse-gas emissions, climate change, and policy. Nordhaus developed DICE to compare climate policies across time.
Paul Romer: An American economist whose work on endogenous technological change earned the 2018 economics Nobel alongside Nordhaus. The Nobel committee recognized Romer and Nordhaus in the same year for distinct contributions.
Climate change mitigation: Actions that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions or increase their removal from the atmosphere. Nordhaus’s models compare mitigation choices with the economic damages of unchecked warming.
2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences: The economics prize awarded to William Nordhaus for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis. The award recognized his climate-economics contribution and brought it wider attention.
Social cost of carbon: The estimated economic damage caused by emitting one additional tonne of carbon dioxide. It translates the damages in Nordhaus’s climate models into a marginal cost of emissions.
Dynamic optimization: A method for choosing a sequence of actions over time to optimize an objective under constraints. DICE uses intertemporal optimization to weigh present abatement costs against future climate damages.
Nicholas Stern: A British economist whose 2006 review assessed the economic risks of climate change and favored strong early action. Stern’s appraisal used a lower discount rate than Nordhaus’s work, producing more urgent policy conclusions.
Cap-and-trade: An emissions policy that sets a total limit and allows regulated entities to trade permits. It is a market-based alternative to the carbon tax Nordhaus often favors.
Climate economics: The study of economic causes, consequences, and policy responses to climate change. Nordhaus helped establish quantitative economic modeling as a prominent approach in this field.

Linked from 2 pages