Yale Bulletin and Calendar

March 2, 2001

Volume 29, Number 21

Two-Week Issue

William D. Nordhaus

Nordhaus is Sterling Professor of Economics

William D. Nordhaus, newly appointed as Sterling Professor of Economics, one of Yale's highest faculty honors, is an authority on economic growth whose research has considered such issues as global warming and climate change as well as the extent to which natural resources constrain economic growth.

Nordhaus has also held top posts at Yale. From 1986 to 1988 he was the provost of the University, and from 1992 to 1993 was vice president for finance and administration. He served from 1977 to 1979 as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Jimmy Carter. In that role, he had special responsibilities for energy policy, international economic affairs, environmental issues and tax policy.

A member of the Cowles Foundation since 1967, Nordhaus has engaged in economic research on a wide range of problems, including productivity, inflation and how energy resources should be allocated and priced. Since the 1970s, he has developed economic approaches to global warming, including the construction of integrated economic and scientific models to determine the efficient path for coping with climate change.

Nordhaus is the coauthor (with Paul A. Samuelson) of the classic textbook "Economics"; its 17th edition was published last fall. He also authored, coauthored or edited "Warming the World: Economic Modeling of Global Warming," "Reforming Federal Regulation," "The Efficient Use of Energy Resources," "Toward a New Iron Age? A Study of Patterns of Resource Exhaustion," "Managing the Global Commons: The Economics of Climate Change," "Costs, Impacts and Benefits of CO2 Mitigation" and "Climate Change: Integrating Science, Economics and Policy," among others. He has written more than 100 articles for professional journals, as well as numerous policy-oriented studies.

A 1963 graduate of Yale College, Nordhaus earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and joined the Yale faculty in 1967 as an assistant professor. He was appointed a full professor in 1973, and in 1979 became the first incumbent of the John Musser Professorship of Economics. He held that post until 1991, and was later named the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of Economics.

The economist has been a consultant to or a member of several committees of the National Academy of Sciences, and is currently a member of its Societal Impacts of Abrupt Climate Change. In addition, he served on a number of panels and committees of the Social Science Research Council. He is currently a member and senior adviser of the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity (Washington, D.C.) and is chair of the advisory panel of the Bureau of Economic Analysis. He also was a member of the Congressional Budget Office's Expert Panel.

The economist is a current or former member of numerous editorial boards. He was a visiting teacher or researcher at the Delhi School of Economics in Delhi, India, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, and the University of Cambridge in England.

Nordhaus received research grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Sloan and Ford Foundations. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society, and was elected to the Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1999. In that same year, he was the recipient of the United States Association of Energy Economics' Adelman-Frankel Award.

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