Lawrence Goulder

Lawrence H. Goulder is the Shuzo Nishihara Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics, Emeritus at Stanford University, Senior Fellow Emeritus at Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research, and Director of the Stanford Center for Environmental and Energy Policy Analysis. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a University Fellow of Resources for the Future.

Goulder graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. in philosophy in 1973. He obtained a master's degree in musical composition from the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris in 1975 and earned a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford in 1982. He was a faculty member in the Department of Economics at Harvard before returning to Stanford's economics department in 1989.

Goulder's research covers a range of environmental issues, including green tax reform, the design of cap-and-trade systems, climate change policy, and comprehensive wealth measurement ("green" accounting). He has served as co-editor of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management and on several advisory committees to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board and the California Air Resources Board.

His work often employs a general equilibrium analytical framework that integrates the economy and the environment and links the activities of government, industry, and households. The research considers both the aggregate benefits and costs of various policies as well as the distribution of policy impacts across industries, income groups, and generations. Some of his work involves collaborations with climatologists and biologists.

At Stanford Goulder teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in environmental economics and policy, and co-organizes a weekly seminar in public and environmental economics.

Focal Areas: Energy and Environment, Regulation and Competition, Taxes and Public Spending