The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2018 to William D. Nordhaus, Yale University, “for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis” and Paul M. Romer, NYU Stern School of Business, “for integrating technological innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis” 1.
On behalf of the Charles University Environment Centre, I would like to congratulate Professor Nordhaus and Professor Romer. Both scholars have broadened the scope of standard economic analysis by constructing models that help us to understand how the market economy interacts with climate change and technological innovations.
The main contribution of Professor Nordhaus is the development of integrated assessment models that help us to understand very complex, long-term processes of a global nature, going well beyond standard economic theory. His models provide a logically consistent way to organise our thinking about the relationship between the economy and emission accumulation, how that accumulation can affect global mean temperatures, and how changes in temperatures might affect GDP, consumption, and welfare. The prize is not only a great personal achievement but a recognition of the importance of environmental economics as a research field as well.
My sincerest congratulations go in particular to Professor Nordhaus, with whom I had the privilege to work at the Conference of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists held in Prague in 2012 that my colleagues and I had the honour of organising. Professor Nordhaus gave a keynote lecture at the EAERE-2012 Conference. You can find the video of the keynote lecture here.
Dr Milan Ščasný
1. https://www.kva.se/en/pressrum/pressmeddelanden/ekonomipriset-2018