Environmental economists win Nobel prize
STOCKHOLM: Americans William Nordhaus and Paul Romer, pioneers in adapting the western economic growth model to focus on environmental issues and sharing the benefits of technology, have won the 2018 Nobel Economics Prize.
In a joint award that turned the spotlight on the impact of climate change, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the duo’s work was helping to answer questions about how to promote longterm, sustainable prosperity.
Romer, of New York Univer sity’s Stern School of Business, is best known for his work on endogenous growth, a theory rooted in investing in knowledge and human capital. He said the award had taken him by surprise, but offered a positive message.
‘‘I think one of the problems with the current situation is that many people think that protecting [the] environment will be so costly and so hard that they just want to ignore them,’’ he said.
‘‘We can absolutely make substantial progress protecting the environment and do it without giving up the chance to sustain growth.’’
Nordhaus, a professor at Yale University, was the first person to create a quantitative model that described the interplay between the economy and the climate, the academy said.
Hours before the award, the United Nations panel on climate change said society would have to radically alter the way it consumed energy, travelled and built to avoid the worst effects of global warming. It declined to comment on yesterday’s award, which is worth nine million Swedish crowns ($NZ1.54 million).