October 08, 2018

Media Contact:
Heather Thorstensen
Manager of Communications
Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society
hthorstensen@sigmaxi.org or (919) 549-4691 ext. 216

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC—Sigma Xi member William D. Nordhaus of Yale University received half of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel today. The prize is given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
 
Nordhaus, who was inducted into Sigma Xi in 1988, was selected for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis. In the 1970s, he had become increasingly worried about the combustion of fossil fuel resulting in a warmer climate. In the mid-1990s, he became the first person to create an integrated assessment model, a quantitative model that describes the global interplay between the economy and the climate. His model integrates theories and empirical results from physics, chemistry, and economics. Nordhaus’ model is now widely spread and is used to simulate how the economy and the climate co-evolve. It is used to examine the consequences of climate policy interventions, for example carbon taxes.

He shares the prize with Paul M. Romer of the New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business, who was selected for technological innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis.