William Brock
/ Alison Brizius
Vilas Research Professor, Emeritus of Economics, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Research Professor, University of Missouri, Columbia
Areas of Expertise:
- Complex dynamics in economics
- Mathematical economics
Brock is the Vilas Research Professor of Economics, Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he has taught economics since 1975. Brock received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. He is well known for his contributions to the theory of optimal growth, the breadth of applications of the intertemporal model to economics, and other aspects of nonlinear dynamics.
Brock has been a Fellow of the Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1992, a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1998, and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economics Association since 2004.
Research Projects
Robustness in Economic Models with Climate Change | Heat Balance Climate Models
Recent Publications
William Brock, Lars Peter Hansen Wrestling with Uncertainty in Climate Economic Models, October 9, 2017, SSRN. (lecture on this paper here)
Brock, W. and A. Xepapadeas. 2017. Climate Change Policy Under Polar Amplification. European Economic Review 94:263-282.
Cai, Y., W. Brock, and A. Xepapadeas. 2016. Climate Change Economics and Heat
Transport Across the Globe: Spatial-DSICE. In 2017 Allied Social Science Association
(ASSA) Annual Meeting, January 6-8, 2017, Chicago, Illinois, 251833. Agricultural and
Applied Economics Association
Anderson, E. W., W. A. Brock, and A. Sanstad. 2016. Robust Consumption and Energy
Decisions. Working paper, SSRN.
Carpenter, S., Brock, W., Folke, C., Van Ness, E., Scheffer, M., 2015,
“Allowing variance may enlarge the safe operating space for exploited
ecosystems,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 112(46):14384-14389
forthcoming in Handbook of Environmental Economics, Partha Dasgupta et al., eds., Elsevier: North Holland.
Kefi, Sonia, Vishwesha Guttal, William A. Brock, Stephen R. Carpenter, Aaron M. Ellison, Valerie N. Livina, David A. Seekell, Marten Scheffer, Egbert H. van Nes, and Vasilis Dakos. "Early warning signals of ecological transitions: methods for spatial patterns." PloS one 9, no. 3 (2014): e92097.
Sonia Kefi, Vishwesha Guttal, William A Brock, Stephen R Carpenter, Aaron M Ellison, Valerie N Livina, David A Seekell, Marten Scheffer, Egbert H van Nes, and Vasilis Dakos. Early warning signals of ecological transitions: methods for spatial patterns. PloS one, 9(3):e92097, 2014.
Anderson, Evan, William Brock, Lars P. Hansen, and Alan Sanstad. "Robust analytical and computational explorations of coupled economic-climate models with carbon-climate response." RDCEP Working Paper No. 14-05, January 2014.
William A Brock, Anastasios Xepapadeas, and Gustav Engstrom. “Energy balance climate models, damage reservoirs, and the time profile of climate change policy.” The Oxford Handbook of the Macroeconomics of Global Warming, Willis Semmler and L. Bernard, editors, Oxford University Press, 2014. Chapter 3, page 1952.
Brock, William, Gustav Engstrom, and Anastasios Xepapadeas. "Spatial climate-economic models in the design of optimal climate policies across locations." European Economic Review 69 (2014): 78-103.
Earlier version also available as a working paper: Brock W, Engstrom G, Xepapadeas A, Spatial Climate-Economic Models in the Design of Optimal Climate Policies across Locations,(October 10, 2012). RDCEP Working Paper No. 12-11.
William Brock, Gustav Engstrom, and Anastasios Xepapadeas. Spatial climate-economic models in the design of optimal climate policies across locations. European Economic Review, 69:78–103, 2014.
William Brock and Steven Durlauf. A sturdy policy evaluation. forthcoming in Journal of Law and Economics, 2015.
Brock, William A., Gustav Engstrom, and A. Xepapadeas. "Energy balance climate models and the economics of climate change." Beijer discussion paper 226, The Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2011).
Earlier version also available as a working paper: Brock, William A., Gustav Engstrom, and A. Xepapadeas. "Energy balance climate models and the economics of climate change", Working Paper.
Brock, William A., Gustav Engstrom, Dieter Grass, and Anastasios Xepapadeas. "Energy balance climate models and general equilibrium optimal mitigation policies." Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 37, no. 12 (2013): 2371-2396.
William A Brock, Anastasios Xepapadeas, and Athanasios N Yannacopoulos. Optimal control in space and time and the management of environmental resources. Annu. Rev. Resour. Econ., 6(1):33–68, 2014.
Brock, William A., Anastasios Xepapadeas, and A. N. Yannacopoulos. "Optimal Control in Space and Time and the Management of Environmental Resources." Annual Review of Resource Economics 6, no. 1 (2014): 33-68.
William A Brock, Anastasios Xepapadeas, and Athanasios N Yannacopoulos. Spatial externalities and agglomeration in a competitive industry. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 42:143–174, 2014.
William A Brock, Anastasios Xepapadeas, and Athanasios N Yannacopoulos. Optimal agglomerations in dynamic economics. Journal of Mathematical Economics, 53:1–15, 2014.
William A Brock and Anastasios Xepapadeas. Modeling coupled climate, ecosystems, and economic systems. Ecosystems, and Economic Systems (March 5, 2015), 2015.
William A Brock, Anastasios Xepapadeas, and Athanasios N Yannacopoulos. Robust control and hot spots in spatiotemporal economic systems. Dynamic Games and Applications, 4(3):257–289, 2014.
William Brock, Anastasios Xepapadeas, et al. Modeling coupled climate, ecosystems, and economic systems. Technical report, Athens University of Economics and Business, 2015.
William A Brock, Anastasios Xepapadeas, and Athanasios N Yannacopoulos. “Robust control of a spatially distributed commercial fishery.” Dynamic Optimization in Environmental Economics, E. Moser, W. Semmler, G. Tragler, and V. Viliov, editors, Springer, 2014. Pgs 215–241.
Stephen R Carpenter, William A Brock, Carl Folke, Egbert H van Nes, and Marten Scheffer. Allowing variance may enlarge the safe operating space for exploited ecosystems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(46):14384–14389, 2015.
Stephen R Carpenter, William A Brock, Jonathan J Cole, and Michael L Pace. A new approach for rapid detection of nearby thresholds in ecosystem time series. Oikos, 123(3):290–297, 2014.
James J Elser, Timothy J Elser, Stephen R Carpenter, and William A Brock. Regime shift in fertilizer commodities indicates more turbulence ahead for food security. PloS one, 9(5):e93998, 2014