Incorporating Climate Change and Climate Policy into Macroeconomic Modeling: Proceedings of a Workshop (2024)
Chapter: Appendix C: Planning Committee Biographies
Appendix C
Planning Committee Biographies
James H. Stock (Chair) is vice provost for Climate and Sustainability, Harvard University; director of the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, Harvard University; and Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. His current research includes energy and environmental economics with a focus on fuels and on U.S. climate change policy. He is co-author, with Mark Watson, of a leading undergraduate econometrics textbook. In 2013–2014, he served as a member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, where his portfolio included macroeconomics and energy and environmental policy. He was chair of the Harvard Economics Department from 2007 to 2009. He holds an M.S. in statistics and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Rachel Cleetus is the policy director with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. She leads the program’s efforts in designing and advocating for effective and equitable policies to address climate change. Cleetus has over 20 years of experience working on policies to promote clean energy, drive deep cuts in heat-trapping emissions, and promote climate resilience. She also researches the risks and costs of climate impacts on people and the economy. She has co-authored numerous reports and articles including Compound Climate Risks in the COVID-19 Pandemic; Killer Heat in the United States: Climate Choices and the Future of Dangerously Hot Days; Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate; Surviving and Thriving in the Face of Rising Seas; and A Transformative Climate Action Framework: Putting People at the Center of Our Nation’s Clean Energy Transition. She is also an expert on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process and has been attending international climate negotiations since 2009. Cleetus has testified several times before Congress, including before the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and the House Committee on Financial Services. She has also been quoted widely in the media. Cleetus holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in economics from Duke University and a B.S. in economics from West Virginia University.
Solomon Hsiang (Chair until April 10, 2023) is currently the Chief Environmental Economist at the Office of Science and Technology Policy as of April 2023. He was previously the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, a Co-Director at the Climate Impact Lab, Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a National Geographic Explorer, and an Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Dr. Hsiang also directs the Global Policy Laboratory at University of California, Berkeley, where his team is integrating econometrics, spatial data science, and machine
learning to answer questions that are central to rationally managing planetary resources−such as the economic value of the global climate, how the United Nations can fight wildlife poaching, the effectiveness of treaties governing the oceans, and whether satellites and Artificial Intelligence can be combined to monitor the entire planet in real time. Dr. Hsiang earned a B.S. in Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science and a B.S. in Urban Studies and Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he received a Ph.D. in Sustainable Development from Columbia University. He was a PostDoctoral Fellow in Applied Econometrics at NBER and a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at Princeton University.
Robert Kopp is a professor in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences and co-director of the University Office of Climate Action at Rutgers University. His research spans sea level change, the interactions between physical climate change and the economy, and the use of climate risk information to inform decision making. He directs the Megalopolitan Coastal Transformation Hub, a National Science Foundation–funded consortium that advances coastal climate adaptation and the scientific understanding of natural and human coastal climate dynamics. He is also a director of the Climate Impact Lab, a collaboration of economists, data scientists, climate scientists, and policy experts that works to assess the economic risks of climate change. Dr. Kopp was a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2021 Sixth Assessment Report and of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s 2017 Fourth National Climate Assessment. He is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), a recipient of AGU’s James B. Macelwane medal, a past Leopold Leadership Fellow, and a past AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow. He received his Ph.D. in geobiology from the California Institute of Technology and his undergraduate degree in geophysical sciences from the University of Chicago. He is currently a member of the National Academies’ Board of Atmospheric Science and Climate (2017–2023) and was a member of the study committee on Assessing Approaches to Updating the Social Cost of Carbon (2015–2017).
Adele C. Morris is a senior adviser in the Division of Financial Stability at the Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve System. She works with the Federal Reserve’s Financial Stability Climate Committee, which is charged with incorporating climate considerations into the Federal Reserve’s financial stability framework. Before joining the Federal Reserve in October 2021, Morris was the Joseph A. Pechman Senior Fellow in Economic Studies and policy director for the Climate and Energy Economics Project at the Brookings Institution. Her academic research relates to climate change, energy, and tax policy, and she is a leading global expert on the design and analysis of carbon pricing policies. She joined Brookings in July 2008 from the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, where she advised members and staff on economic, energy, and environmental policy. Prior to that, Morris was the lead natural resource economist for the U.S. Treasury Department for 9 years. On assignment to the U.S. Department of State in 2000, she led negotiations on land use and forestry issues in the international climate
change treaty process. Prior to Treasury, she served as the senior economist for environmental affairs at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during the development of the Kyoto Protocol. Morris began her career at the Office of Management and Budget, where she oversaw rulemaking by agriculture and natural resource agencies. Morris holds a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University, an M.S. in mathematics from the University of Utah, and a B.A. from Rice University.
Emi Nakamura is the Chancellor’s Professor of Economics in the Berkeley Economics Department. Her research focuses on monetary and fiscal policy, business cycles, and macroeconomic measurement. She is a co-editor of the American Economic Review, a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and co-director of the Monetary Economics program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Nakamura serves on the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Economic Advisers and the Executive Committee of the American Economics Association. She is a recipient of the John Bates Clark medal, the Elaine Bennett Research Prize, the NSF Career Grant, and the Sloan Research Fellowship. She holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and an A.B. from Princeton University, and taught at the Columbia economics department and business school before joining the Berkeley economics department in 2018.
