An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are many sub-fields, ranging from the broad philosophical theories to the focused study of minutiae within specific markets, macroeconomic analysis, microeconomic analysis or financial statement analysis, involving analytical methods and tools such as econometrics, statistics, economics computational models, financial economics, mathematical finance and mathematical economics.

In academia

The professionalization of economics, reflected in academia, has been described as "the main change in economics since around 1900." Economists debate the path they believe their profession should take. It is, primarily, a debate between a scholastic orientation, focused on mathematical techniques, and a public discourse orientation, which is more focused on communicating to lay people pertinent economic principles as they relate to public policy. Surveys among economists indicate a preference for a shift toward the latter. However, these preferences expressed in private often differ with what is actually acted out in the public eye.

Most major universities have an economics faculty, school or department, where academic degrees are awarded in economics. However, many prominent economists come from a background in mathematics, engineering, business, law, sociology, or history. Getting a PhD in economics takes six years, on average, with a median of 5.3 years.

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, established by Sveriges Riksbank in 1968, is a prize awarded to economists each year for outstanding intellectual contributions in the field of economics. The prize winners are announced in October every year. They receive their awards (a prize amount, a gold medal and a diploma) on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.

Professions

Economists work in many fields including academia, government and in the private sector, where they may also "...study data and statistics in order to spot trends in economic activity, economic confidence levels, and consumer attitudes. They assess this information using advanced methods in statistical analysis, mathematics, computer programming [and] they make recommendations about ways to improve the efficiency of a system or take advantage of trends as they begin."

In contrast to regulated professions such as engineering, law or medicine, there is not a legally-required educational requirement or license for economists. In some job settings, the possession of a Bachelor's or Master's degree in economics is considered the minimum credential for being an economist. However, in some parts of the US government, a person can be considered an economist as long as they have four or more university courses in economics. Also, a person can gain the skills required to become a professional economist in other related disciplines, such as statistics or some types of applied mathematics, such as mathematical finance or game theory.

A professional working inside of one of many fields of economics or having an academic degree in this subject is widely considered to be an economist, and any person within any of these fields can claim to be one. Economists are also employed in banking, finance, accountancy, commerce, marketing, business administration, lobbying and non- or not-for profit organizations.

Politicians often consult economists before enacting policy, and many statesmen have academic degrees in economics (see List of politicians with economics training).

By country

Economics graduates are employable in varying degrees, depending on the regional economic scenario and labour market conditions at the time for a given country. Apart from the specific understanding of the subject, employers value the skills of numeracy and analysis, the ability to communicate and the capacity to grasp broad issues which the graduates acquire at the university or college. Whilst only a few economics graduates may be expected to become professional economists, many find it a base for entry into a career in finance – including accounting, insurance, tax and banking, or management. A number of economics graduates from around the world have been successful in obtaining employment in a variety of major national and international firms in the financial and commercial sectors, and in manufacturing, retailing and IT, as well as in the public sector – for example, in the health and education sectors, or in government and politics. Small numbers go on to undertake postgraduate studies, either in economics, research, teacher training or further qualifications in specialist areas.

United States

According to the United States Department of Labor, there were around 15,000 non-academic economists in the United States in 2006, with a median salary of roughly $77,010; with the top ten percent earning more than $136,550, annually. About 135 colleges and universities grant about 900 new Ph.D.s in economics each year. The type of academic degree, Bachelors, Masters or Doctorate degree had significant influence on an individuals job outlook and salary. While the overall expected job growth for economists remains below nation average, the demand for those with a Doctorate, especially those employed in the corporate sector, is expected to increase at a considerably faster pace. Incomes were highest for those in the private sector, followed by the federal government with academia and high schools paying the lowest incomes. Median salaries ranged from $45,000 for those with a Bachelor to $85,000 for those with a Ph.D. in economics. A recent and continuous study by PayScale.com showed Economic consultants with a Ph.D. had the overall highest median income for any group making $116,250, the median salaries for an assistant professor was $63,500, for an associate professor it lay at $67,000 and $85,000 for a full professor. The overall median income for doctorates in academia was $75,000 compared to $125,000 in consulting and $87,000 in banking.

Policy advising and analyzing of economic current trends are among the main responsibilities of economists in the United States. A recent study of U.S. economists by Daniel B. Klein and Charlotta Stern found that the responses show that most economists are supporters of safety regulations, public schooling, and anti-discrimination laws. They are evenly mixed on personal choice issues, military action, and the minimum wage. Most economists oppose government ownership of enterprise and tariffs.

United Kingdom

The largest single professional grouping of economists in the UK are the more than 1000 members of the Government Economic Service, who work in 30 government departments and agencies.

Analysis of destination surveys for economics graduates from a number of selected top schools of economics in the United Kingdom (ranging from Newcastle University to the London School of Economics), shows nearly 80 per cent in employment six months after graduation – with a wide range of roles and employers, including regional, national and international organisations, across many sectors. This figure compares very favourably with the national picture, with 64 per cent of economics graduates in employment.

Famous economists

Probably the earliest economist, Fan Li, served as an advisor to King Goujian of Yue (r. 496 BC—465 BC) in the ancient Chinese Spring and Autumn Period. Fan Li prospered in business, applying the concepts of 'buy low sell high' in the feudal agrarian society of ancient China, and wrote a book of sage advice on business management. Early economists were also found in the Ancient Greek world, with Aristotle (382—322 BC) expounding in his work Topics on the topic of human production and further examining the topic in Politics. Xenophon (431—355) also wrote extensively on the Athenian economy in his work Economics. According to Lakshmi Kant Jha and K. N. Jha and "the pioneer economist of the world" was Chanakya (c. 350-283 BC) an adviser and prime minister to the first Maurya Emperor Chandragupta from 340—293 BC.

In the 18th century, one of the first economic writers was Richard Cantillon (1680—1734), who wrote the treatise Essai Sur la Nature du Commerce en Général. Early founders of economic concepts included the Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian, David Hume (1711–1776), and the so-called "classical economists": English demographer and political economist Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), political economist David Ricardo (1772–1823), and the Scottish moral philosopher and political economist Adam Smith (1723–1790). Other early developers of economic concepts include the British philosopher, political economist John Stuart Mill (1806–1873); French economist and free trade advocate Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832); Prussian philosopher, political economist, and revolutionary Karl Marx (1818–1883); French classical liberal theorist and political economist, Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850); and English economist and logician William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882).

Founders of important economic concepts who were alive during the 20th century include the Austrian economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (1851–1914); the founder of the Austrian School of economics, Carl Menger (1840–1921); British economist, developer of Keynesian economics, and influential founder of modern theoretical macroeconomics John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946); American economist, health campaigner, and eugenicist Irving Fisher (1867–1947); German economist and proponent of the social market economy, Wilhelm Röpke (1899–1966); Canadian-American economist, popularizer of economics John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006); American economist, Nobel Prize Laureate and proponent of the Tobit model, James Tobin (1918–2002); Austrian-British member of the Austrian School of economics Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992); and American economist, public intellectual, and laissez-faire capitalism advocate Milton Friedman (1912–2006).

Current well-known economists include 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winner Paul Krugman, a public intellectual, advocate of modern liberal policies, known for his descriptions of rising inequality; Jeffrey Sachs, former United Nations economic adviser to the Secretary-General, author of The End of Poverty and architect of shock therapy throughout poor countries; Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve; Ben Bernanke, the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve; Joseph Stiglitz, an American economist, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics winner, critic of the governance of globalization, Chief Economist of the World Bank; and Fengbo Zhang, a leading Chinese economist who introduced Western Economics to China.

Honors and awards

The highest honor awarded to economists is the Nobel Prize in Economics, awarded since 1969 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

See also

Chief economist

List of economists

World Bank Chief Economist

Notes

References

Mark Blaug and Howard R. Vane (1983, 2003 4th ed.). Who's who in Economics. Table of Contents links. Cheltenham & Edward Elgar Pub.

Pressman, Steven, 2006. Fifty Major Economists. Routledge,

Robert Sobel, 1980. The Worldly Economists .

Jha, K. N. and Jha, L. K.(1998) Chanakya the pioneer economist of the world: His contribution in economic management, APH Publishing corporation, New Delhi (India), pp1–275

External links

Economistul

Category:Economics terminology Category:Occupations

Name	Dean Baker
Image name	Dean Baker.PNG
Birth date	July 13, 1958
Field	Economics, Macroeconomics, Urban & Real Estate Economics
Institution	Center for Economic and Policy Research
Alma mater	Swarthmore College (B.A., 1981)University of Denver (M.A., 1983)University of Michigan (Ph.D.)
Signature
Repec prefix	f | repec_id = pba441

Dean Baker (b. July 13, 1958) is an American macroeconomist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, with Mark Weisbrot. He previously was a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor of economics at Bucknell University. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan.

Since 1996 Baker has been the author of a weekly online commentary on economic reporting. The Economic Reporting Review was published from 1996 to 2006; subsequently he has continued this commentary on his weblog Beat The Press, which was formerly published at The American Prospect, but is now located at the CEPR website.

Background

Baker graduated from Swarthmore College (B.A., 1981), the University of Denver (M.A., 1983) and the University of Michigan (Ph.D.). As a grad student at the University of Michigan, Baker participated in, and was arrested at, two sit-ins protesting Rep. Carl Pursell's votes for military aid to the Contras. In 1986, Baker defeated Donald Grimes in the Democratic primary and ran unsuccessfully against Pursell to represent Michigan's second Congressional district.

Baker wrote his thesis on consumption theory. He argues that analyzing consumption requires categorizing objects, which cannot be done using only physical characteristics. The words for objects must be used, e.g., chair. These words imply socially understood uses, which define the object, e.g., a chair is used to sit on. Individuals have preferences over these uses of objects. This is at odds with consumption theory, which makes no assumptions about how individuals derive utility from objects. Baker also argues that objects' use values change with their social context, rejecting consumption theory's claim that consumption is private, and not influenced by society.

Career

Before co-founding the Center for Economic and Policy Research in 1999, Baker was a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor of economics at Bucknell University. "He has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, and the OECD's Trade Union Advisory Council."

From 1996 to 2006 Baker was the author of a weekly online commentary on the New York Times' and Washington Post's economic reporting. From 2006 he continued this commentary on the weblog Beat The Press, where he critiques economic reporting in the leading broadsheets, NPR and other mainstream news sources.

Financial crisis of 2007–2009

Basing his outlook on house-price data-sets produced by the US government and Yale economist Robert Shiller, Baker was among the first economists to assert there was a bubble in the US housing market in 2002, well before its peak in late 2005 and one of the few economists to predict that the collapse of this bubble would lead to recession.

Baker opposed the US government bailout of Wall Street banks on the basis that the only people who stood to lose from their collapse were their shareholders and well-paid CEOs. As regards any hypothetical, negative effects of not doing the bailout, he has explained that, "We know how to keep the financial system operating even as banks go into bankruptcy and receivership," citing US government action taken during the S&L; crisis of the 1980s. He has ridiculed the US elite for favoring it, asking, "How do you make a DC intellectual look less articulate than Sarah Palin being interviewed by Katie Couric? That's easy. You ask them how failure to pass the bailout will give us a Great Depression."

Bibliography

(selected as a 1998 "Outstanding Academic Book") An excerpt from the book. Note: This book is free.

Dean Baker (2010), False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy, PoliPointPress, ISBN 978-0-9824171-2-6

References

External links

;Informational

CEPR bio

Op-Eds and Columns

Weblog: Beat The Press

The Conservative Nanny State

;Media

Dean Baker presentation on 2008-2009 economic trouble at Bucknell University

Marketplace Public Radio (Audio): We Demand to See More Transparency, March 9, 2009

C-SPAN's Book TV (Video): Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy, January 27, 2009

News Hour with Jim Lehrer (Video): Massive Job Cuts Renew Calls fro Quick Action on Stimulus, January 26, 2009

NPR's Fresh Air (Audio): The Key to Economic Stimulus?, January 13, 2009

Bill Moyers Journal (Video), August 8, 2008

Dean Baker argues that the debate over the economy should not be over whether to regulate, but how in the Boston Review

Video (and audio) of debates & discussions involving Baker on Bloggingheads.tv

Dean Baker: Banks Could Be Big Winners of President Obama’s Foreclosure Prevention Program - video by Democracy Now!

Category:Swarthmore College alumni Category:University of Denver alumni Category:University of Michigan alumni Category:Bucknell University faculty Category:1958 births Category:Living people Category:Macroeconomists Category:American economists Category:American economics writers

Yoram Bauman is an American economist and stand-up comedian.

History

He grew up in San Francisco, received an undergraduate degree in mathematics at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, then attended graduate school at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, receiving a Ph.D. in Economics in 2003.

Bauman is an environmental economist. Working as a teacher at the University of Washington, in the Program on the Environment, Bainbridge Graduate School, and Lakeside School. He is the co-author of the 1998 book Tax Shift which advocates switching taxation from income and property to resource consumption.

Bauman bills himself as the "world's first and only stand-up economist."

References

External links

Yoram Bauman's website

Category:Living people Category:American economists Category:American comedians Category:Reed College alumni Category:University of Washington alumni

Name	Susan Clark
Birthname	Nora Golding
Birthdate	March 08, 1940
Birthplace	Sarnia, Ontario, Canada
Occupation	Actress
Yearsactive	1967–2000
Spouse	Alex Karras (1980-present) 1 childBob Joseph (1970-1973) (divorced)

Susan Clark (born March 8, 1940) is a Canadian actress, possibly best-known for her role as Katherine on the American television sitcom Webster, on which she appeared with her husband, Alex Karras.

Personal life

Clark was born Nora Golding in Sarnia, Ontario, the daughter of Eleanor Almond (née McNaughton) and George Raymond Golding. Clark grew up in Toronto, Ontario, where she attended Northern Secondary School. She was one of several successful entertainers and many notable persons to have attended this school. She is married to her Webster co-star Alex Karras, and the two have a daughter named Katie (b. 1980). They met when they costarred in the TV movie, Babe, in which she played Babe Didrikson Zaharias, and he played her husband, professional wrestler George Zaharias.

Career

Clark had leading roles in several films, including Coogan's Bluff with Clint Eastwood in 1968, Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here with Robert Redford in 1969, Valdez Is Coming with Burt Lancaster in 1971, Night Moves with Gene Hackman in 1975, the disaster film Airport 1975, and another disaster film City on Fire with Barry Newman, Leslie Nielsen and Shelley Winters. In 1976, Clark starred in a three-hour made-for-television movie biography of the aviatrix Amelia Earhart, and her marriage to noted publisher G.P. Putnam, for which she received an Emmy nomination for Best Actress.

Clark played Dr. Cleo Markham in the movie , hooker Cherry Forever in Porky's (in which Alex Karras also starred), Elizabeth Murray in Emily of New Moon, Elaine Moore in the television movie Trapped and Muriel Mulligan in the 1994 television movie . She also played murderess Beth Chadwick in the Columbo episode "Lady in Waiting", which co-starred Leslie Nielsen and Jessie Royce Landis.

Most recently, in 2006 Clark appeared at the Manitoba Theatre Centre in the Warehouse production of The Retreat from Moscow, and in the 2007 Mainstage production of The Importance of Being Earnest.

Filmography

Banning (1967)

Something for a Lonely Man (1968)

Madigan (1968)

Coogan's Bluff (1968)

Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969)

Skullduggery (1970)

(1970)

Valdez Is Coming (1971)

Skin Game (1971)

Columbo (TV) (1971)

Showdown (1973)

The Midnight Man (1974)

Airport 1975 (1975)

Night Moves (1975)

The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975)

Murder by Decree (1979)

The North Avenue Irregulars (1979)

City on Fire (1979)

Promises in the Dark (1979)

Double Negative (1980)

Nobody's Perfekt (1981)

Porky's (1982)

Butterbox Babies (1995)

References

External links

Category:1940 births Category:Living people Category:Canadian film actors Category:Canadian television actors Category:People from Sarnia, Ontario Category:People from Toronto

Name	Nouriel Roubini
School tradition	New Keynesian economics
Color	darkorange
Image name	Nouriel Roubini 05.jpg
Birth date	March 29, 1959Istanbul, Turkey
Nationality	American
Institution	New York University
Field	International economics
Alma mater	Bocconi University (B.A. 1982)Harvard University (Ph.D. 1988)
Influences	John Maynard KeynesHyman MinskyLarry SummersJeffrey Sachs
Signature
Repec prefix	e | repec_id = pro145

Nouriel Roubini (born 29 March 1959) is an American professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business and chairman of Roubini Global Economics, an economic consultancy firm.

After receiving a BA in political economics at Bocconi University, Milan, Italy and a doctorate in international economics at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, he began academic research and policy making by teaching at Yale while also spending time at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Federal Reserve, World Bank, and Bank of Israel. Much of his early studies focused on emerging markets. During the administration of President Bill Clinton, he was a senior economist for the Council of Economic Advisers, later moving to the United States Treasury Department as a senior adviser to Timothy Geithner, who is now Treasury Secretary.

In 2008, Fortune magazine wrote, "In 2005 Roubini said home prices were riding a speculative wave that would soon sink the economy. Back then the professor was called a Cassandra. Now he's a sage". The New York Times notes that he foresaw "homeowners defaulting on mortgages, trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities unraveling worldwide and the global financial system shuddering to a halt". In September 2006, he warned a skeptical IMF that "the United States was likely to face a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust, an oil shock, sharply declining consumer confidence, and, ultimately, a deep recession". Nobel laureate Paul Krugman adds that his once "seemingly outlandish" predictions have been matched "or even exceeded by reality."

As Roubini's descriptions of the current economic crisis have proven to be accurate, he is today a major figure in the U.S. and international debate about the economy, and spends much of his time shuttling between meetings with central bank governors and finance ministers in Europe and Asia. he was #4 on Foreign Policy magazine's list of the "top 100 global thinkers." He has appeared before Congress, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the World Economic Forum at Davos.

Early life and education

Nouriel Roubini was born in Istanbul, Turkey, to Iranian Jewish parents. When he was age two, his family moved to Tehran, Iran, and later he lived in Israel. From 1962 to 1983 he resided in Italy where he attended Bocconi University in Milan, and then he moved to the United States to pursue his business doctorate in international economics at Harvard University. and is "well-known on the New York club circuit".

Roubini spent one year at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before moving to Milan, Italy, where he received his B.A., summa cum laude, in economics from the Bocconi University in 1982. He received his Ph.D. in international economics from Harvard University in 1988. According to his academic adviser, Jeffrey Sachs, he was unusual in his talent with both mathematics and intuitive understanding of economic institutions.

By 1998, he joined the Clinton administration first as a senior economist in the White House Council of Economic Advisers and then moved to the Treasury department as a senior adviser to Timothy Geithner, then the undersecretary for international affairs and now Treasury secretary in the Obama administration.

Global nomad

He likes to refer to himself as a "global nomad", and says, "You can be sitting still surfing the Internet, and experience other worlds, ideas and societies. But I’ve found that there is nothing better than visiting a different country, even if for three days. ... you can’t only be a virtual Global Nomad, with goggles on, in a virtual reality. You have to be there. You have to see it, smell it and live it. You have to see people, travel, and interact."

In September 2006, he saw the end of the real estate bubble: "When supply increases, prices fall: That’s been the trend for 110 years, since 1890. But since 1997, real home prices have increased by about 90 percent. There is no economic fundamental—real income, migration, interest rates, demographics—that can explain this. It means there was a speculative bubble. And now that bubble is bursting." In the Spring 2006 issue of International Finance, he wrote an article titled "Why Central Banks Should Burst Bubbles" in which he argued that central banks should take action against asset bubbles. When asked whether the real estate ride was over, he said, "Not only is it over, it’s going to be a nasty fall."

By May 2009, he felt that analysts expecting the U.S. economy to rebound in the third and fourth quarter were "too optimistic." He stated, "Certainly the rate of economic contraction is slowing down from the freefall of the last two quarters." He expects negative growth to the end of 2009, and feels that during 2010 the recovery is still going to be weak," with the full recession lasting 24 or 36 months, and a possibility of an "L-shaped" slow recovery that Japan went through in The Lost Decade. But in fact, the US economy started to grow in mid 2009 just like the optimistic analysts forecasted.

In his opinion, much of the current recession's cause is due to "boom-and-bust cycles," and feels the U.S. economy needs to find a different growth path in the future. "We’ve been growing through a period of time of repeated big bubbles," he said. "We’ve had a model of 'growth' based on overconsumption and lack of savings. And now that model has broken down because we borrowed too much." He feels that too much human capital went into financing the "most unproductive form of capital, meaning housing" and would like to see America create a model of growth in more-productive activities. He feels that "sustainable growth may mean investing slowly in infrastructures for the future, and rebuilding our human capital," by investing in renewable resources. "We don’t know what it’s going to be," he says, "but it’s going to be a challenge to find a new growth model. It’s not going to be simple."

Global economy

2009

As of January 2009, he remained pessimistic about the U.S. and global economy. He said in September, 2008, "we have a subprime financial system, not a subprime mortgage market". "As the U.S. economy shrinks, the entire global economy will go into recession. In Europe, Canada, Japan, and the other advanced economies, it will be severe. Nor will emerging market economies—linked to the developed world by trade in goods, finance, and currency—escape real pain."

His pessimism is focused on the short-run rather than the medium or long-run.

At a conference in Dubai in January, 2009, he said, the U.S. banking system was "effectively insolvent." He added that the "systemic banking crisis.... The problems of Citi, Bank of America and others suggest the system is bankrupt. In Europe, it’s the same thing." To deal with this problem, he recommends that the U.S. government "do triage between banks that are illiquid and undercapitalized but solvent, and those that are insolvent. The insolvent ones you have to shut down." He adds, "We're in a war economy. You need command-economy allocation of credit to the real economy. Not enough is being done," he felt at the time.

2010

In 2010, he again warned that despite an improved economy with rising stock markets, the crisis was not over and new bubbles were on the horizon:

:We are just at the next stage. This is where we move from a private to a public debt problem . . . We socialised part of the private losses by bailing out financial institutions and providing fiscal stimulus to avoid the great recession from turning into a depression. But rising public debt is never a free lunch, eventually you have to pay for it.

In late May 2010, markets around the world began dropping due partly to problems in Greece and the Eurozone. "Roubini believes Greece will prove to be just the first of a series of countries standing on the brink," writes the Telegraph. Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy, and New International Financial Architecture.

Research

Roubini's research interests include:

international macroeconomics and international finance;

macroeconomics and fiscal policy;

political economy;

growth theory;

European monetary issues.

Current appointments

Research Fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research

Research Fellow, Centre for Economic Policy Research, London, UK

Member, Bretton Woods Committee

Member, Council on Foreign Relations Roundtable on the International Economy

Member, Academic Advisory Committee, Fiscal Affairs Department, International Monetary Fund

References

External links

Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor

Nouriel Roubini media blog

"After the Storm" Professor Roubini's syndicated monthly series with Project Syndicate.

Professor Roubini's NYU Stern Homepage

Leigh Bureau speaker profile

Category:People from Istanbul Category:1959 births Category:Living people Category:Persian Jews Category:Turkish Jews Category:American economists Category:New Keynesian economists Category:International finance economists Category:Macroeconomists Category:Jewish American social scientists Category:Jewish American writers Category:American economics writers Category:United States Department of the Treasury officials Category:United States Council of Economic Advisors Category:Clinton Administration personnel Category:New York University faculty Category:Yale University faculty Category:Alumni of Bocconi University Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni Category:American art collectors

Name	Bjørn Lomborg
Caption	Bjørn Lomborg
Birthdate	January 06, 1965
Birthplace	Denmark
Occupation	Author, Researcher, Analyst
Subject	Environmental Economics
Influences	Julian Simon

Bjørn Lomborg (born January 6, 1965) is a Danish author, academic, and environmental writer. He is an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre and a former director of the Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen. He became internationally known for his best-selling and controversial book The Skeptical Environmentalist.

In 2002, Lomborg and the Environmental Assessment Institute founded the Copenhagen Consensus, which seeks to establish priorities for advancing global welfare using methodologies based on the theory of welfare economics.

Until 2010 Lomborg campaigned against the Kyoto Protocol and other measures to cut carbon emissions in the short-term, and argued for adaptation to short-term temperature rises as they are inevitable, and for spending money on research and development for longer-term environmental solutions, and on other important world problems such as AIDS, malaria and malnutrition.

In 2010, in conjunction with an announcement of a forth-coming book, Lomborg revised his position regarding mitigation of anthropogenic global warming. He has consistently supported the position that global warming exists, but cost benefit analyses, as calculated by the Copenhagen Consensus ranked climate mitigation initiatives low on a list of international development initiatives when first done in 2004. In 2008, the issue of global warming saw an increase in its priority ranking, culminating with examination of a broader list of possible solutions. He announced his agreement with "tens of billions of dollars a year to be invested in tackling climate change" and declared global warming to be "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and "a challenge humanity must confront". In a 2010 interview with the New Statesman, Lomborg summarized his position on climate change: "Global warming is real - it is man-made and it is an important problem. But it is not the end of the world."

Academic career

Lomborg spent a year as an undergraduate at the University of Georgia, earned an M.A. degree in political science at the University of Aarhus in 1991, and a Ph.D. degree in political science at the University of Copenhagen in 1994.

He lectured in statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus as an assistant professor (1994–1996) and associate professor (1997–2005). He left the university in February 2005 and in May of that year became an Adjunct Professor at Copenhagen Business School.

Early in his career his professional areas of interest lay in the simulation of strategies in collective action dilemmas, simulation of party behavior in proportional voting systems, and the use of surveys in public administration. In 1996, Lomborg's paper, "Nucleus and Shield: Evolution of Social Structure in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma", was published in the academic journal, American Sociological Review.

Later Lomborg's interests shifted to the use of statistics in the environmental arena. His most famous book in this area is The Skeptical Environmentalist, whose English translation was published as a work in environmental economics by Cambridge University Press in 2001. He later edited Global Crises, Global Solutions, which presented the first conclusions of the Copenhagen Consensus, published in 2004 by the Cambridge University Press. In 2007, he authored a book entitled Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming.

The Skeptical Environmentalist

:Main article: The Skeptical Environmentalist

In 1998, Lomborg published four essays about the state of the environment in the leading Danish newspaper Politiken, which according to him "resulted in a firestorm debate spanning over 400 articles in major metropolitan newspapers."

In 2001, he attained significant attention by publishing The Skeptical Environmentalist, a controversial book whose main thesis is that many of the most-publicized claims and predictions on environmental issues are wrong.

Accusations of scientific dishonesty

After the publication of The Skeptical Environmentalist, Lomborg was accused of scientific dishonesty. Several environmental scientists brought a total of three complaints against Lomborg to the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD), a body under Denmark's Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. The charges claimed that The Skeptical Environmentalist contained deliberately misleading data and flawed conclusions. Due to the similarity of the complaints, the DCSD decided to proceed on the three cases under one investigation.

DCSD investigation

On January 6, 2003 the DCSD reached a decision on the complaints. The ruling was a mixed messages, deciding the book to be scientifically dishonest, but Lomborg himself not guilty because of lack of expertise in the fields in question:

:Objectively speaking, the publication of the work under consideration is deemed to fall within the concept of scientific dishonesty. ...In view of the subjective requirements made in terms of intent or gross negligence, however, Bjørn Lomborg's publication cannot fall within the bounds of this characterization. Conversely, the publication is deemed clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice.

The DCSD cited The Skeptical Environmentalist for:

#Fabrication of data; #Selective discarding of unwanted results (selective citation); #Deliberately misleading use of statistical methods; #Distorted interpretation of conclusions; #Plagiarism; #Deliberate misinterpretation of others' results.

MSTI review

On February 13, 2003, Lomborg filed a complaint against the DCSD's decision, with the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MSTI), which has oversight over the DCSD. On December 17, 2003, the Ministry annulled the decision made by DCSD. In doing so, MSTI cited several procedural errors, including: The DCSD did not provide specific statements on actual errors. On this point the MSTI stated "the DCSD has not documented where [Dr. Lomborg] has allegedly been biased in his choice of data and in his argumentation, and ... the ruling is completely void of argumentation for why the DCSD find that the complainants are right in their criticisms of [his] working methods. It is not sufficient that the criticisms of a researcher's working methods exist; the DCSD must consider the criticisms and take a position on whether or not the criticisms are justified, and why." The DCSD did not use a precise standard for deciding "good scientific practice" in the social sciences; The DCSD's definition of "objective scientific dishonesty" was not clear about whether "distortion of statistical data" had to be deliberate or not;

The DCSD had not properly documented that The Skeptical Environmentalist was a scientific publication on which they had the right to intervene in the first place;

The Ministry remitted the case to the DCSD. In doing so the Ministry indicated that it regarded the DCSD's previous findings of scientific dishonesty in regard to the book as invalid. The Ministry also instructed the DCSD to decide whether to reinvestigate.

DCSD response

On March 12, 2004, the Committee formally decided not to act further on the complaints, reasoning that renewed scrutiny would, in all likelihood, result in the same conclusion. among Danish academics. 308 scientists, many of them from the social sciences, criticised the DCSD's methods in the case and called for the DCSD to be disbanded. The Danish Minister of Science, Technology, and Innovation then asked the Danish Research Agency to form an independent working group to review DCSD practices. In response to this, another group of Danish scientists collected over 600 signatures (primarily from the medical and natural sciences community) to support the continued existence of the DCSD and presented their petition to the Danish Research Agency. the alumni network of the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership (CPSL), voted The Skeptical Environmentalist among its list of the top 50 sustainability books.

Continued debate and criticism

The rulings of the Danish authorities in 2003-2004 left Lomborg's critics frustrated. Lomborg claimed vindication as a result of MSTI's decision to set aside the original finding of DCSD.

The Lomborg Deception by Howard Friel claims to offer a "careful analysis" of the ways in which Lomborg has "selectively used (and sometimes distorted) the available evidence". Lomborg has denied the claims.

A Dutch think tank, HAN, Heidelberg Appeal the Netherlands, published a report in which they claimed 25 out of 27 accusations against Lomborg to be unsubstantiated or not to the point. A group of scientists with relation to this think tank also published an article in 2005 in the Journal of Information Ethics, in which they concluded that most criticism against Lomborg was unjustified, and that the scientific community misused their authority to suppress Lomborg.

Kåre Fog

The claim that the accusations against Lomborg were unjustified was challenged in the next issue of Journal of Information Ethics by Kåre Fog, one of the original plaintiffs. Fog reasserted his contention that, despite the ministry's decision, most of the accusations against Lomborg were valid. He also rejected what he called "the Galileo hypothesis", which he describes as the conception that Lomborg is just a brave young man confronting old-fashioned opposition.

Kåre Fog has established a catalogue of criticisms against Lomborg on the Lomborg-errors website. Fog maintains the catalogue, which includes a section for each page in each chapter in The Skeptical Environmentalist. In each section, Fog lists and details what he believes to be flaws and errors in Lomborg's work. Fog explicitly indicates if there are any details which he believes support the interpretation that the particular error may have been made deliberately by Lomborg, in order to mislead. Lomborg has on numerous occasions commented and defended himself against Kåre Fog's critique, especially in the web-book "Godhedens Pris".

Further career

Government work

In March 2002, the newly elected center-right prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, appointed Lomborg to run Denmark's new Environmental Assessment Institute (EAI). On June 22, 2004, Lomborg announced his decision to resign from this post to go back to the University of Aarhus, saying his work at the Institute was done and that he could better serve the public debate from the academic sector.

In 2002, Lomborg and the Environmental Assessment Institute founded the Copenhagen Consensus, which seeks to establish priorities for advancing global welfare using methodologies based on the theory of welfare economics. A panel of prominent economists was assembled to evaluate and rank a series of problems every four years. The project was funded largely by the Danish government, and co-sponsored by The Economist. A book summarizing the conclusions of the economists' first assessment, Global Crises, Global Solutions, edited by Lomborg, was published in October 2004 by Cambridge University Press.

Further books

Solutions for the World's Biggest Problems, published in 2007, offers an "... overview of twenty-three of the world's biggest problems relating to the environment, governance, economics, and health and population. Leading economists provide a short survey of the state-of-the-art analysis and sketch out some policy solutions for which they provide cost-benefit ratios."

, also published in 2007, argues against taking immediate and "drastic" action to curb greenhouse gases while simultaneously stating that "Global warming is happening. It's a serious and important problem ...". He argues that "... the cost and benefits of the proposed measures against global warming. ... is the worst way to spend our money. Climate change is a 100-year problem — we should not try to fix it in 10 years." Howard Friel wrote a book entitled The Lomborg Deception, which criticizes Lomborg, claiming that the sources Lomborg provides in the footnotes do not support—and in some cases are in direct contradiction to—Lomborg's assertions in the text of the book; Lomborg has denied these claims in a public rebuttal.

In August 2010, Lomborg appeared to reverse his position on global warming in an interview with the Guardian. He revealed that he endorses the use of a carbon tax to fight climate change in his latest book. As a public figure he has been a participant in information campaigns in Denmark about homosexuality, and states that "Being a public gay is to my view a civic responsibility. It's important to show that the width of the gay world cannot be described by a tired stereotype, but goes from leather gays on parade-wagons to suit-and-tie yuppies on the direction floor, as well as everything in between"

Recognitions and awards

In November 2001, Lomborg was selected "Global Leader for Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum. In June 2002, BusinessWeek named Lomborg one of the "50 Stars of Europe" (June 17), in the category of Agenda Setters. The magazine noted, "No matter what they think of his views, nobody denies that Bjorn Lomborg has shaken the environmental movement to its core." Lomborg was selected as one of TIME magazine's 100 most influential people of 2004. In 2008 he came 41st in the Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll run by Foreign Policy and Prospect Magazine, having placed 14th the previous time the poll was conducted in 2005, and was named as one of the 50 people who could save the planet by The Guardian.

Discussions in the media

After the release of The Skeptical Environmentalist in 2001, Lomborg was subjected to intense scrutiny and criticism in the media, where his scientific qualifications and integrity were both attacked and defended. The verdict of the Danish Committees for Scientific Dishonesty fueled this debate and brought it into the spotlight of international mass media. By the end of 2003 Lomborg had become an international celebrity, with frequent appearances on radio, television and print media around the world. Scientific American published strong criticism of Lomborg's book. Lomborg responded on his own website, quoting the article at such length that Scientific American threatened to sue for copyright infringement. Lomborg eventually removed the rebuttal from his website; it was later published in PDF format on Scientific American's site. The magazine also printed a response to the rebuttal. The Economist defended Lomborg, claiming the panel of experts that had criticised Lomborg in Scientific American was both biased and did not actually counter Lomborg's book. The Economist argued that the panel's opinion had come under no scrutiny at all, and that Lomborg's responses had not been reported.  — the U.S. Showtime television programme featured an episode entitled "Environmental Hysteria" in which Lomborg criticised what he claimed was environmentalists' refusal to accept a cost-benefit analysis of environmental questions, and stressed the need to prioritise some issues above others. Rolling Stone stated, "Lomborg pulls off the remarkable feat of welding the techno-optimism of the Internet age with a lefty's concern for the fate of the planet." The Union of Concerned Scientists strongly criticised The Skeptical Environmentalist, claiming it to be "seriously flawed and failing to meet basic standards of credible scientific analysis", accusing Lomborg of presenting data in a fraudulent way, using flawed logic and selectively citing non-peer-reviewed literature. The review was conducted by Peter Gleick, Jerry D. Mahlman, Edward O. Wilson, Thomas Lovejoy, Norman Myers, Jeff Harvey and Stuart Pimm. Lomborg countered that some of the scientists involved in this report were also named and criticised in The Skeptical Environmentalist, and thus had a vested interest in discrediting it and its author.

Publications

Bjørn Lomborg, "Nucleus and Shield: Evolution of Social Structure in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma", American Sociological Review, 1996.

Bjørn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist, Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Bjørn Lomborg (editor), Global Crises, Global Solutions, Copenhagen Consensus, Cambridge University Press, 2004

Bjørn Lomborg, "", 2007

Bjørn Lomborg, "Smart Solutions to Climate Change, Comparing Costs and Benefits", Cambridge University Press, November 2010, ISBN 9780521763424.

Documentary film

Bjørn Lomborg released a documentary feature film COOL IT on 12 November 2010 in the US. The Atlantic review of COOL IT described it as "An urgent, intelligent, and entertaining account of the climate policy debate, with a strong focus on cost-effective solutions.""

The Bloggers' Briefing with Bjorn Lomborg and his movie COOL IT. Accuracy In Media

See also

The Skeptical Environmentalist

List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people

Environmentalism

Environmental skepticism

Project Syndicate

References

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Bjørn Lomborg: The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. Cambridge University Press 2001 (ISBN 0521010683).

Nichola Wade: "From an Unlikely Quarter, Eco-Optimism". The New York Times, 7 August 2001.

Stephen Schneider, John P. Holdren, John Bongaarts, Thomas Lovejoy: "Misleading Math about the Earth". Scientific American, January 2002.

External links

Lomborg's personal website, with own articles, links to related broadcasts on radio and TV, and Lomborg's opinion on the issues with the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty.

"Global Warning" Bjorn Lomborg's monthly op/ed commentary series for Project Syndicate.

Kåre Fog's "Lomborg errors" website contains a catalogue of claims of errors in Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist, Fog's opinion on Lomborg and his career.

Wired magazine interviews Lomborg, June 2004, regarding the Copenhagen Consensus.

Article on Bjørn Lomborg in the online edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. The article was written by Michael Allaby, author of many (although not peer-reviewed) books on climate, who had previously expressed ideas similar to Lomborg. If you cannot access the full text, click the first link in this Google search.

Grist magazine article Rebuttals from scientists working in the various fields his book makes claims about.

HAN investigation of complaints made by Lomborg critics, by a number of Dutch scientists of the complaints made by Lomborg critics.

Correcting myths from Bjørn Lomborg, extensive collection of criticisms of Lomborg, with replies.

Skeptical About The Skeptical Environmentalist, Richard M. Fisher's review of The Skeptical Environmentalist, in "The Skeptical Inquirer".

Letter in Support of Lomborg in Scientific American, a defense of Lomborg's work, from Matt Ridley, former scientific correspondent of The Economist.

Vanishing Point: On Lomborg and Extinction, a criticism of Lomborg, from Edward O. Wilson.

TED Talks: Bjorn Lomborg sets global priorities at TED in 2005

ZenSci Lomborg portrait Interview on climate and science politics.

E&E.tv;: Skeptical enviro Bjorn Lomborg discusses post-Kyoto roadmap, calls Kyoto "feel good strategy" (OnPoint, 12 December 2007)

Interview on The British Magazine New Statesman

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