Nicholas Stern, Baron Stern of Brentford

For the film producer, see Nicholas Stern.

Lord Stern of Brentford

Nicholas Herbert Stern, Baron Stern of Brentford, FBA (born 22 April 1946, Hammersmith) is a British economist and academic. He is the son of the late Bert Stern and Marion Stern and nephew of Donald Swann - half of the Flanders and Swann partnership. Richard Stern, former Vice-President, World Bank, and Brian E Stern, former Vice-President Xerox Corporation, are his brothers. He was the Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 2000 to 2003, and was recently a civil servant and government economic advisor in the United Kingdom. In June, 2007 Stern became the first holder of the I. G. Patel Chair at the London School of Economics and Political Science and head of the newly created India Observatory within the Asia Research Centre. In 2008, he was also appointed Chair of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, a major new research centre also at LSE.

After attending Latymer Upper School, he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and his Doctor of Philosophy in economics at Nuffield College, Oxford. He was a lecturer at Oxford University from 1970 to 1977, and served as a Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick from 1978 to 1987. He taught from 1986 to 1993 at the London School of Economics, becoming the Sir John Hicks Professor of Economics. From 1994 until 1999 he was the Chief Economist and Special Counsellor to the President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. His research focused on economic development and growth, and he also wrote books on Kenya and the Green Revolution in India. From 1999 until 2000 Stern was Chairman of the consultancy London Economics founded by John Kay.

After his time working for the World Bank, Stern was recruited by Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, to work for the British government where, in 2003, he became second permanent secretary at H.M. Treasury, initially with responsibility for public finances, and head of the Government Economic Service. Having also been Director of Policy and Research for the Commission for Africa, he was, in July 2005, appointed to conduct reviews on the economics of climate change and also of development, which led to the publication of the Stern Review. At the time, he ceased to be a second permanent secretary at the Treasury though he retained the rank until retirement in 2007; the review team he headed was based in the Cabinet Office.

The Stern Review was released on 30 October 2006, and gained global media attention for Stern's conclusions. Stern describes climate change as an economic externality and therefore addressing this externality should allow market forces to develop low carbon technologies. The report concludes that mitigation, i.e. addressing the issue now is the best economic choice. He also claims that the ethics of the issue can not be ignored or even separated. The Stern Review was criticized by some fellow economists, including Partha Dasgupta, David Maddison, Robert Mendelsohn, William Nordhaus, Richard Tol, Hal Varian, Martin Weitzman, and Gary Yohe, but supported by Kenneth Arrow, James Mirrlees, Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz and Robert M. Solow. An early criticism was that the Stern Review was a political, rather than an analytical document. That is, the assumptions in the Stern Review followed from the desired conclusions to make a case for action on climate change. Since publication, this criticism has been undermined by growing evidence in support of the Stern Review and Stern has recently been reported in the press saying that were he to repeat the exercise today, he would raise his estimate of the impacts and, correspondingly, the case for action. At the Climate Congress, Stern stated that current understanding of the effects of global warming, and the climate sensitivity, suggest the conclusions of the Stern review are in need of updating. Perhaps the most significant controversy concerning the original report centered on Stern's approach to discounting, specifically the rate of time preference and the rate of risk aversion used in the Stern Review. Stern Review argues that the applicable discount rate is endogenously determined by ethics and the chosen path of carbon dioxide emissions, and that private rates of return do not equate to social discount rates in imperfect markets. Hence, in Stern's opinion, any attempt to read off a social discount rate from private markets must fail.

In 2006, he was elected as an Honorary Fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge.

In a speech given in 2007 at the Australian National Press Club, Stern called for one per cent of gross global product to be employed in global warming-related environmental measures. In 2009, Stern clearly links recovery from the Global economic crisis with an effective response to climate change.

His book "Blueprint for a safer planet", was published in April 2009.

Awards and recognition

Stern was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1993; he is also an Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2004 he was made a Knight Bachelor. On 18 October 2007, it was announced that Stern would receive a life peerage and was to be made a non-party political peer (i.e would sit as a cross-bencher in the House of Lords).

Stern was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science degree by the University of Warwick in 2006, an Honorary Doctor of International Relations (DIR) degree by the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations in 2007 and an Honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Sheffield in 2008. Sir Nicholas is set to be honoured again on the 9 July 2008 by the University of York and the 24 September by the Université Paris-Dauphine.

External links

• Lord Stern of Brentford, FBA at CSA Celebrity Speakers
• Stern at Oxford Uni
• World Bank biography
• The man behind the British Treasury’s mammoth climate change report
• The UK Government's Treasury web pages about the Stern review
• Article about the Stern review's conclusions on China's development
• Nicholas Stern interview at The Beaver, 13 February 2007
• Speech to the Economics of Climate Change Symposium, Nov 2006
• 'Green Routes To Growth' article published in the Guardian.co.uk's Comment Is Free Section, 23 October 2008
• Launch green economic revolution now, says Stern
• Lord Stern: The RIBA Trust Annual Lecture(Video)