William Nordhaus has died

William D. Nordhaus, Sterling Professor of Economics, Emeritus, whose influential work as an economist transformed a field and who won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics for his pioneering work on the economics of climate change, died on Oct. 30 following a battle with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer. He was 85. Nordhaus was also a central figure on the Yale campus for more than 50 years, teaching generations of undergraduate and graduate students and holding key administrative roles for the university, including as provost and vice president for finance and administration. His influential work ranged widely, from the economics of climate change to the measurement of technological change, the interaction of the business cycle and the election cycle, and the measurement of economic welfare — farsighted work done jointly with the late James Tobin, himself a Yale Nobel laureate and one of the most influential economists of his day. Nordhaus is best known, however, for receiving the 2018 Nobel Prize for “integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis,” an achievement most prominently reflected in what was known as the DICE (Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy) model, an influential model that examines the interactions among carbon emissions, climate change, and economic growth. The DICE model helps policymakers estimate the economic costs of climate change, including such impacts as crop losses and rising sea levels, and weigh them against the costs of reducing emissions. Nordhaus used the model to demonstrate that a carbon tax can reduce emissions efficiently and to estimate the optimal level of such a tax, providing an influential economic framework for carbon pricing. “The signal contribution of economics,” Nordhaus said in his Nobel speech, “is to recognize that climate change is a harmful unintended side effect of economic growth. The best remedy for such externalities is a pollution charge or what is now known as a carbon tax.” He was curious about everything, deepening our understanding of everything he touched, from climate change and the business cycle to calculating the present value of Yale tuition from 1701 to the present. Nordhaus began contemplating the economics of climate change in the 1970s, when few economists — or anyone else — were thinking about or studying it. The DICE model that he developed — together with his dozens of articles, worldwide lectures, and numerous books — paved the way for a vast body of research which continues to frame the ongoing debate on how best to address the threat of climate change. Along the way, Nordhaus served his field and the nation: as an editor of scientific journals, a member of the Congressional Budget Office Panel of Economic Experts, the first chairman of the Advisory Committee for the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a chairman of the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and as a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a distinguished fellow and president of the American Economic Association. Not to be ignored among his extraordinary accomplishments is his co-authorship of multiple edits of the textbook “Economics.” The textbook, first published in 1948 by economist Paul Samuelson, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in economics, remains the standard-bearer for the principles of economics courses nationwide. Nordhaus became co-author in 1985 and continued as the primary author, revising and updating it after Samuelson’s 2009 death, and maintaining it through its most recent 19th edition. In recent years he was working on a project through Lighthouse Books to make an economics textbook freely available to all learners. William Nordhaus was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where his family gained prominence for its many civic contributions. His father, a Yale College and Yale Law School graduate, made his law firm one of the nation’s most prominent advocates of Indian law, focusing on the representation of American Indian tribes, tribal corporations, and Native American organizations; in 1984 his firm won a landmark water case for the Jicarilla Apache Nation. He also pioneered skiing in New Mexico’s Sandia Mountains and founded what became the Sandia Peak Ski Area, located in the Cibola National Forest. The younger Nordhaus remained a skier all his life. Nordhaus arrived at Yale as an undergraduate in 1959, an event that he called “one of the great windfalls of my life”; he described Yale as a “paradise for minds coming to the age of abstract reason.” He took Directed Studies (DS), an intensive program for first-year students, and was taught by professors Vincent Scully, Leonard Krieger, Victor Brombert, and Richard Bernstein. These scholar-teachers, Nordhaus would say, “were role models for his future academic life.” He went on to graduate school at MIT, another place he thought of as a kind of paradise – he called it “Arcadia.” He was mentored there by Nobel laureates Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow, and his class was filled with young economists who would also become leaders of their generation. Hired as an assistant professor at Yale right after completing graduate school, Nordhaus from the start on was involved in university affairs. The opposite of an insular scholar, he was an important figure in his department and on campus, teaching undergraduates as well as graduate students and appearing regularly at Connecticut Hall faculty meetings. When a Faculty of Arts and Sciences faculty senate was established, in 2015, he was one of its inaugural members and later its chair. As an economist and as a university citizen, Bill Nordhaus pursued the truth with rigor and purpose. In his two years as university provost, between 1986 and 1988, and later filling in as vice president for finance and administration in 1992-1993, he helped guide Yale through periods of financial volatility and structural reorganization, focusing on balancing the university budget and implementing long-term financial modeling. In 2014 he helped architect Yale’s internal carbon charge system — making Yale one of the first major universities to test institutional mechanisms for carbon pricing on its own campus. “Bill was a great joy to have as a colleague and friend,” said William Brainard, Arthur Okun Professor of Economics, Emeritus, and Nordhaus’ close colleague and friend for 60 years. “He was curious about everything, deepening our understanding of everything he touched, from climate change and the business cycle to calculating the present value of Yale tuition from 1701 to the present.” Over the years, Nordhaus was a trusted counselor to many university leaders and authored numerous institutional studies and reports. He and Bill Brainard, also a former provost, were affectionately known familiarly around campus as “The Bills.” When people wanted to strengthen their position on a contested issue, they might invoke “The Bills,” knowing the weight that their opinions carried as thoughtful, careful stewards of Yale’s legacy. Nordhaus was a Yalie through and through: undergraduate, alumnus, faculty member, teacher, scholar, administrator, who in his contributions represented the best of what a university stands for. He had always loved and admired his Yale teachers. Their influence was evident in how he lived his own Yale life. For years, he taught a large introductory lecture course in macroeconomics. An iconic photo (below) captured students from that class presenting Nordhaus with flowers on the day he won the Nobel Prize in October 2018. “As an economist and as a university citizen, Bill Nordhaus pursued the truth with rigor and purpose,” said President Emeritus Richard Levin, Nordhaus’s student, friend, and colleague for over 50 years. “His devotion to Yale and his determined effort to understand the economics of climate change were two sides of the same coin. He wanted to perfect the institution he loved, and he wanted to spare humanity the avoidable harm of uncontrolled global warming.” Nordhaus is survived by his wife, Barbara, a graduate of the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis, a practicing psychoanalyst, and an assistant clinical professor at the Yale Child Study Center for many years; three children, Jeff, Monica ’91, and Rebecca ’95 (William Curry); and three grandchildren, Annabel, Margot, and Alexandra. Funeral arrangements are private and a memorial service will be held in the future.