Climate Change Economist Martin Weitzman, A Levittown Grad, Dies

LEVITTOWN, NY — Martin Weitzman, a Harvard economist and Levittown native best known for arguing that governments would care more about climate change if they looked at what could happen in the worst-case scenario, has died. He was 77.

The Massachusetts medical examiner’s office determined Weitzman hanged himself in Newton, Massachusetts, on Aug. 27, The New York Times reported. Weitzman, a professor, was upset over being passed over for a Nobel Prize last year, colleagues told the Times. He also wrote a note questioning whether he was still fit to study in his field of expertise.

Some of the world's most renowned economists and climate scientists honored Weitzman in October 2018 at Harvard Kennedy School upon his retirement. At the event, the 2018 Nobel Prize winner William Nordhaus of Yale University said Weitzman "changed the way we think about economics and the environment," according to the university. Nordhaus lauded Weitzman for his works, including research on the share economy, Soviet Union, prices and quantities, and his so-called "dismal theorem" of climate change, where he questioned how useful a typical cost-benefit study is when facing a possibly catastrophic outcome.

Born Meyer Levinger in Manhattan on April 1, 1942, Weitzman was placed into foster care and later adopted by two elementary school teachers who renamed him Martin Lawrence Weitzman and raised him in Levittown, where he went to high school, The Washington Post reported.

But Weitzman had roots all over.

He graduated from Swarthmore College in suburban Philadelphia in 1963 and earned a master's degree in statistics and operations research at Stanford University. He went on to earn a doctorate in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Times reported.