Working on a paper recently, I wanted to cite the original Nordhaus DICE paper. The list below is me trying to sort out the publication history. If you see errors, let me know!
Nordhaus, William. “The Allocation of Energy Resources.” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 4, no. 3 (1973): 529-576.
926 cites.1 Proto-climate IAM focused on the implications of running out of oil for the resulting energy transition. Lots of the same economic modeling from this paper would reappear in later papers. I find it fascinating that even in this early paper, Nordhaus was finding the optimal path called for decarbonization of everything except nonsubstitutable transportation by 2045-2070.
Nordhaus, William D. “Can we control cabon dioxide?” IIASA Working Paper (1975). link
180 cites. Covers lots of the same ground as the Cowles Foundation discussion paper and 1977 AER paper, both below.
Nordhaus, William D. “Strategies for the control of carbon dioxide.” Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper, mimeo, (1977).
101 cites. Surprised this one isn’t cited more because it contains a quite complete IAM. The climate model is substantially simpler than DICE. The initial model simply includes a GHG concentration limit – ahead of its time! – but an elaboration of the model contains a damage function and looks almost identical to DICE in many respects.
Nordhaus, William D. “Economic growth and climate: the carbon dioxide problem.” American Economic Review 67, no. 1 (1977): 341-346.
698 cites. Basically summarizes the Cowles Foundation discussion paper. Remarkable that this was published only 2 years after Wally Broecker popularized the term “global warming” in his 1975 Science article.
This paper and the Cowles Foundation discussion paper are credited as being the origin of the 2$\degree$C global warming threshold (see here). The threshold features prominently in Figure 1.
Notable quote: the ECS is 3, fight me! For some reason, the Jaeger and Jaeger paper cited above claims Nordhaus thought the ECS was 2 but he clearly states here that he thinks it is 3. He did think that 2 was, as Figure 1 shows, he maximum warming experienced in the previous 100,000 years.
The most careful study to date (S. Manabe and R. T. Wetherald) predicts that a doubling of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide would eventually lead to a global mean temperature increase of 3$\degree$C
Nordhaus, William. “How fast should we graze the global commons?” American Economic Review 72, no. 2 (1982): 242-246.
318 cites. Another paper summarizing the longer and more detailed Cowles discussion paper. Some histories of climate economics incorrectly cite this the origin of climate economics despite the 2 or 3 previous papers by Nordhaus on the topic (see, e.g., here). I can’t blame them; this has the much catchier title!
Nordhaus, William D. “To slow or not to slow: the economics of the greenhouse effect.” Economic Journal 101, no. 407 (1991): 920-937.
2360 cites. Highly cited, but does not actually feature DICE (it is coming soon). Very similar model, again, to the 1977 Cowles discussion paper.
Nordhaus, William D. “An optimal transition path for controlling greenhouse gases.” Science 258, no. 5086 (1992): 1315-1319
1311 cites. I think this is the actual first DICE paper. The model we are familiar with appears for the first time (discrete time, multilayer climate system, quadratic damage function). I always thought this one had “Rolling the DICE” in the title, and Nordhaus even cites it that way in later papers (as in the AER P&P below).
Nordhaus, William D. “The ‘DICE’ model: background and structure of a dynamic integrated climate-economy model of the economics of global warming.” (1992).
421 cites. Not published; background material and details on the DICE model. This is the document I consult when I want the complete description of the original model. Interestingly the copy of the document I have describes the model as version 1.2.3. When were the earlier versions written?
Nordhaus, William D. “Rolling the ‘DICE’: an optimal transition path for controlling greenhouse gases.” Resource and Energy Economics 15, no. 1 (1993): 27-50.
819 cites. This is the actual “Rolling the ‘DICE’” paper. This and the AER P&P are the first times “DICE” appears titles (as far as I can tell).
Nordhaus, William D. “Optimal greenhouse-gas reductions and tax policy in the ‘DICE’ model.” American Economic Review P&P 83, no. 2 (1993): 313-317.
608 cites.
Nordhaus, William D. 1994. Managing the Global Commons: The Economics of Climate Change. MIT Press.
3010 cites. Most highly cited of the early Nordhaus climate model papers or books. I think this is the latest work that could plausibly claim to be part of the origin of DICE.
Version history
2025-08-08: First version
2025-08-09: Added Resource and Energy Econ paper, added reference to 1977 papers being origin of 2 degree target.
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Citation counts from Google Scholar as of August 8, 2025. ↩