Graciela Chichilnisky
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Graciela Chichilnisky (born 1944) is an Argentine American
mathematical economist Mathematical economics is the application of mathematical methods to represent theories and analyze problems in economics. Often, these applied methods are beyond simple geometry, and may include differential and integral calculus, difference an ...
. She is a professor of economics at Columbia University and has expertise in climate change.Curriculum vitae
from Columbia University, May 2010, retrieved 2017-04-23.
She is also co-founder and former CEO of the company
Global Thermostat Direct air capture (DAC) is a process of capturing carbon dioxide () directly from the ambient air (as opposed to capturing from point sources, such as a cement factory or biomass power plant) and generating a concentrated stream of for seques ...
.


Background and education

Chichilnisky was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants. After a military coup, the
Argentine military The Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic, in es, Fuerzas Armadas de la República Argentina, are controlled by the Commander-in-Chief (the President) and a civilian Minister of Defense. In addition to the Army, Navy and Air Force, there are ...
violently closed scientific faculties at the University of Buenos Aires on July 29, and she left Argentina for the United States, Supported by a fellowship from the Ford Foundation,. Chichilnisky matriculated in the doctoral program in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology although without an undergraduate degree; she moved to the University of California, Berkeley in 1968, and completed her Ph.D. in mathematics there in 1970, under the supervision of
Jerrold E. Marsden Jerrold Eldon Marsden (August 17, 1942 – September 21, 2010) was a Canadian mathematician. He was the Carl F. Braun Professor of Engineering and Control & Dynamical Systems at the California Institute of Technology.. Marsden is listed as an ISI ...
. She earned a second Ph.D. in economics in 1976 under the supervision of
Gérard Debreu Gérard Debreu (; 4 July 1921 – 31 December 2004) was a French-born economist and mathematician. Best known as a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he began work in 1962, he won the 1983 Nobel Memorial Prize ...
.


Career

After a postdoctoral position at Harvard University, she accepted a position as an associate professor at Columbia University in 1977, and received tenure there in 1979, and was named UNESCO Professor of Mathematics and Economics from 1995 to 2008. She also held a chair in economics at the University of Essex from 1980 to 1981, and has additionally been a visiting professor at other universities including at Stanford in 2017. In 2010 Chichilnisky, together with Peter Eisenberger and
Edgar Bronfman Jr. Edgar Miles Bronfman Jr. (born May 16, 1955) is an American businessman who currently serves as a Managing Partner at Accretive LLC, a private equity firm focused on creating and investing in technology companies. He previously served as CEO of ...
formed
Global Thermostat Direct air capture (DAC) is a process of capturing carbon dioxide () directly from the ambient air (as opposed to capturing from point sources, such as a cement factory or biomass power plant) and generating a concentrated stream of for seques ...
, a company that specializes in Direct air capture from a unit that extracts carbon dioxide directly from air.


Research

Chichilnisky is the author of over 17 books and over 330 scientific research papers. She is best known for proposing and designing the carbon credit emissions trading market underlying the
Kyoto Protocol The Kyoto Protocol was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that (part ...
which was international law since 2005, and was a lead author on the 2007
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations. Its job is to advance scientific knowledge about climate change caused by human activities. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) a ...
that won the 2007 Nobel Prize. In the theory of international trade, she constructed an example of a "transfer paradox", where a transfer of goods from a donor to a recipient can render the recipient worse off and the donor better off. She constructed examples where
export-led growth Export-oriented industrialization (EOI) sometimes called export substitution industrialization (ESI), export led industrialization (ELI) or export-led growth is a trade and economic policy aiming to speed up the industrialization process of a ...
strategies for developing countries could result in paradoxically poor results, because of
increasing returns to scale In economics, returns to scale describe what happens to long-run returns as the scale of production increases, when all input levels including physical capital usage are variable (able to be set by the firm). The concept of returns to scale arises ...
in the technologies of the developed countries. In welfare economics and voting theory, particularly in the specialty of social choice theory, Chichilnisky introduced a continuous model of collective decisions to which she applied algebraic topology; following her initiatives, continuous social choice has developed as an international subdiscipline. During the 1980s and 1990s some of Chichilnisky's research was done in collaboration with mathematical economist
Geoffrey M. Heal Geoffrey M. Heal is a British-American economist known for his work on environmental and resource economics. He is the Donald C. Waite III Professor of Social Enterprise at Columbia Business School. Biography Heal was born in 1944 in Bangor, Wal ...
, who has been her colleague at Essex and Columbia.


Litigation

In 1994 Chichilnisky sued two other economics professors, accusing them of stealing her ideas. Chichilnisky was countersued and dropped her lawsuit. The subject matter of the controversy was described in contemporaneous news reports as "distinctly small-time stuff, at least according to most experts." In 1991 and 2000 Chichilnisky sued her employer Columbia University alleging gender discrimination, pay inequality, and attempts by the university to dissolve her endowed chair. The latter suit was settled in 2008 under undisclosed terms;. The '' New York Sun'' reported that Chichilnisky received $200,000. According to Columbia's spokesperson, "Chichilnisky signed a statement that her salary was not discriminatory".


Selected publications


Peer-reviewed articles

* * * * * * * * * *


Book chapters

* Beltratti, A., Chichilnisky, G. and Heal, G., 1998
Sustainable use of renewable resources
In Sustainability: Dynamics and Uncertainty (pp. 49–76). Springer Netherlands.


Books

* * * * * * * * Oil and the International Economy (1991)
The Evolving International Economy
(1987)
Sustainability, Dynamics and Uncertainty
(1998)
Markets, Information and Uncertainty: Essays in Economic Theory in Honor of Kenneth J. Arrow
(1999) * Catastrophe or new society?: A Latin American world model (1976) * Development and Global Finance: The Case for an International Bank for Environmental Settlements (1997) * Environmental Markets: Equity and Efficiency (2000) * The Economics of Climate Change (2010)
Reversing Climate Change
(2020) * Handbook on the Economics of Climate Change (2018)


Awards and recognition

Dr. Graciela Chichilnisky was selected by IAIR (International Alternative Investment Review) as the 2015
CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...
of the Year in
Sustainability Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable livi ...
.


References


External links

*
Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chichilnisky, Graciela Climate economists Trade economists Development economists Mathematical economists Voting theorists Game theorists Columbia University faculty Topologists American women economists American women political scientists American political scientists UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni Academics of the University of Essex Argentine economists Argentine women economists Argentine Jews American people of Argentine-Jewish descent American expatriates in England American political philosophers People from Buenos Aires Argentine people of Russian-Jewish descent Argentine emigrants to the United States Living people 1946 births 21st-century American women