A Question of Balance

WARNING

You are viewing an older version of the Yalebooks website. Please visit out new website with more updated information and a better user experience: https://www.yalebooks.com

Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies

William Nordhaus

View Inside Format: Paper
Price: $27.50
YUP
Our shopping cart only supports Mozilla Firefox. Please ensure you're using that browser before attempting to purchase.

Also Available in:
Cloth
e-book

The 2018 Nobel laureate for economics shows how economic analysis can help us design economic policies to address the looming challenges of global warming

As scientific and observational evidence on global warming piles up every day, questions of economic policy in this central environmental topic have taken center stage. But as author and prominent Yale economist William Nordhaus observes, the issues involved in understanding global warming and slowing its harmful effects are complex and cross disciplinary boundaries. For example, ecologists see global warming as a threat to ecosystems, utilities as a debit to their balance sheets, and farmers as a hazard to their livelihoods.

In this important work, William Nordhaus integrates the entire spectrum of economic and scientific research to weigh the costs of reducing emissions against the benefits of reducing the long-run damages from global warming. The book offers one of the most extensive analyses of the economic and environmental dynamics of greenhouse-gas emissions and climate change and provides the tools to evaluate alternative approaches to slowing global warming. The author emphasizes the need to establish effective mechanisms, such as carbon taxes, to harness markets and harmonize the efforts of different countries. This book not only will shape discussion of one the world’s most pressing problems but will provide the rationales and methods for achieving widespread agreement on our next best move in alleviating global warming.

William D. Nordhaus, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics and Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University, is the author of The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World. He lives in New Haven, CT.

“Professor Nordhaus pioneered the integrated analysis of climate change, combining climatic and economic modeling.  His . . . book shows that his work remains the standard of analysis by which the field may be judged. [The] exposition is very clear and thorough, showing all the relevant issues so that those who may disagree can pinpoint exactly the points at issue.”—Kenneth J. Arrow, StanfordUniversity, Nobel Laureate in Economics

“William Nordhaus has, with the publication of A Question of Balance, once again reestablished the gold standard for economic analysis of climate policy in an uncertain world where scientific understanding changes unexpectedly.”—Gary Yohe, Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics at Wesleyan University

"This book provides a forceful, insightful, and timely overview of climate change policy. Professor Nordhaus adroitly unravels the mysteries of global warming and lays bare the options before us."­—John P. Weyant, Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University

“Nordhaus's careful modeling of the world climate and the world economy is a cool breeze of common sense in an arena of discourse often dominated by torrents of hot air.”—Dale Jorgenson, Samuel W. Morris University Professor of Economics, Harvard University

“If you are skeptical of Lomborg and his branch of environmental skepticism, read . . . A Question of Balance.”—Michael Shermer, Huffington Post

“The gold standard for economic analysis of climate policy in an uncertain world where scientific understanding changes unexpectedly.”—Gary Yohe, Wesleyan University
Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title of 2008.
ISBN: 9780300209396
Publication Date: October 28, 2014
256 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 1/4
25 b/w illus.
The Climate Casino

Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World

William Nordhaus

View details